The story is told that, when she was about eight years old, he named her as a "toast" at the Kit-Cat Club, and as she was not known to the majority of the members he sent for her, where, on her arrival, she was received with acclamation by the Whig wits there assembled.
Sometimes Lady Mary in her girlhood stayed at Thoresby, and occasionally came up to her father's London house, which was in Arlington Street, which visits, accepting the story told by her granddaughter, Lady Louisa Stuart, cannot have been an unmixed delight.

"Some particulars, in themselves too insignificant to be worth recording, may yet interest the curious, by setting before them the manners of our ancestors," Lady Louisa says.

"Lord Dorchester, having no wife to do the honours of his table at Thoresby, imposed that task upon his eldest daughter, as soon as she had bodily strength for the office: which in those days required no small share.

For this mistress of a country mansion was not only to invite--that is urge and tease--her company to eat more than human throats could conveniently swallow, but to carve every dish, when chosen, with her own hands.

The greater the lady, the more indispensable the duty.