Miss Peggy stubbed her toe in the bathroom of Hotel Roanoke, and that’s how we came to occupy the Governor’s Suite for a night.

Hotel Roanoke is one of the grandes dames of Virginia hospitality, an English Tudor castle first opened in 1882 to accommodate the bigwigs of the Roanoke-based Norfolk & Western Railway. When the N&W became Norfolk Southern and roared out of the city toward Atlanta, the hotel became the property of nearby Virginia Tech. Tech turned the management over to the Doubletree chain, which has preserved its atmosphere.

It seemed the appropriate place for Miss Peggy and me to stay while we were in town for memorial services for our old friend, Perry Dean. Perry had the looks and bearing of a Patrician, but he had retained the common touch while acquiring a taste for the finer things. I had attended many functions at the hotel during my years as editorial-page editor of the Roanoke Times and had even addressed a Chamber of Commerce banquet there. But I had never spent the night wrapped in its elegance.

So Miss Peggy and I checked into a room with a queen-sized bed. The room was small but comfortable; they didn’t design for large rooms during the late 19th century. And the hotel itself offered all the perks we could want.

Even grandes dames have their flaws, and Miss Peggy discovered one while I was going to get the car to take us to the memorial service. I waited at the entrance, figuring she was preoccupied with last-minute make-up touches. When I finally stepped into the lobby to find out what was holding her up, I saw Miss Peggy surrounded by hotel staff.

“Oh my gosh,” I thought. “Surely she didn’t try to sneak out with one of those pillows with ‘Sweet Dreams’ embroidered on it.”

No. Miss Peggy had stumbled across a loose tile in the bathroom, which jarred her bad back slightly. She had stopped by the desk to report the minor flaw in the floor, and the staff went on red alert. They offered to take her to the emergency room (it wasn’t necessary), then assured her that when we returned they would have a new room waiting for us.

We returned, and sure enough, we were directed to a new room — on the hotel’s 7th floor, which is as high as you can get in Hotel Roanoke without climbing onto the roof. The bronze plate outside the room read “Governor’s Suite.”

Well, Miss Peggy was dressed pretty nicely, and I was wearing my dark blue pinstripe suit, the one I hold in reserve for weddings, funerals and anniversary outings. Since it was a Saturday and nobody else within miles was wearing a suit and tie, I reckon they figured we were VIPs of some kind.

It kind of reminded me of the time years ago when I covered a Southern Governor’s Conference at the Homestead, another grande dame in the mountains of Southwest Virginia. I was representing an Alabama newspaper, and the governor of Alabama, trying to keep the state budget within bounds, did not attend. My newspaper was making money hand over fist, so it sprang for a couple of nights in the magnificent old resort. Fob James and I both were rumpled and portly and balding, so I suppose I might have passed for the governor. Anyway, they put Miss Peggy and me up in a two-story suite featuring a spiral staircase.

But it wasn’t as opulent as the Hotel Roanoke accommodation. We entered a two-bedroom, two-bath suite with marble tiles in the entrance hall, and not one of them was loose.

The master bedroom contained a king-size bed, and by king-size I mean big enough to accommodate King Taufa’ahau Tupou IV of Tonga, whose peak weight was 440 pounds. Neither the governor of Virginia nor I come anywhere close to that. Miss Peggy and I needed cell phones to talk to each other across it. I would judge that the bed was big enough to accommodate the governor, the first lady, his secretary and his campaign manager without triggering improprieties — not that any governor in this civilized nation would engage in that kind of perversion.

The second bedroom contained two queen-sized beds, big enough to accommodate an entire gubernatorial Cabinet.

I had been in governors’ suites before, but they were usually filled with convivial aides armed with a night’s supply of jokes about the political opposition, enough cigars to smoke Castro out of Havana, and a year’s supply of single-malt Scotch.

This one had a kitchen containing a mini-bar stocked with an assortment of good stuff, but it was under lock and key. And there were no Scotch-drinking, cigar-smoking politicos. Just Miss Peggy and me.

I promptly lost my glasses, misplaced my hearing aids and lost my way to the bathroom.

When I found it, I stepped into a spacious shower with a glass panel across half of it, the rest being open but well beyond range of the spray.

I was confronted by a set of controls that resembled the dash panel of a 747. I’d turn one knob and get cold water on my chest, another one and get hot water in my face. Miss Peggy quickly figured out how to use it, but I was too proud to ask for her help.

“They don’t even have a bidet,” I sniffed.

“I was thinking the same thing,” she said.

Not that we’re used to finding bidets in the Holiday Inns, Hampton Inns and Ramadas at the Interstate exits where we normally stop over.

But the subject seemed appropriate for a linthead scribbler and his redneck queen in town to bid goodbye to a debonair friend with whom they had shared a few of the finer things, not the least of them being warm camaraderie.

Readers may write Gene Owens at 315 Lakeforest Circle, Anderson SC 29625 or at WadesDixieco@AOL.com.