"It was horribly bad tea," said she, "and I know a place where you can get it exceptionally good. I am just dying for a cup."
"Where is your place?"
"In Little Collins Street. The funniest place you ever saw."
"Why, that must be the place Mary wouldn't take me to yesterday. She said men were not admitted."
"Oh, what a story!"
"Well, she said the people there didn't want them."
"Stuff! Of course they do. Didn't you hear Mrs. Bullivant say she was there yesterday with Captain what's-his-name, that charming new A.D.C.? No, you were flirting with Miss Baxter—oh, I saw you!—and had no eyes or ears for anybody else."
"Then I presume I may accompany you, and have some tea too?"
"Of course you may. You'll be charmed—everybody is. There are dear little chairs, in which you can actually rest yourself, and tables so high"—spreading her hand on a level with her knee. "And it's awfully retired and peaceful, if you want to talk. I only hope"—regardless of her previous efforts to compass that end—"that it won't get too well known. That would spoil it."
Anthony stalked through the basket-maker's shop (that customers passed that way, in view of his wares, was a consideration that largely affected the rent, to Mrs. Liddon's advantage), and knocked his head and his elbows on the dark staircase, and thought it was indeed the funniest place of its kind that he had ever seen. But when he reached the tea-room, and looked round with his cultured eyes upon its singular appointments, he was quite as charmed as Maude had expected him to be, and more surprised than charmed.