He did not laugh. But she laughed, almost boisterously.
"I can't help telling you," she said, "you're perfectly lovely, great-stepuncle. Are we both going to drink out of the same cup?" In such manner did the current of her talk gyrate and turn corners.
He approached the cupboard.
"No, no!" She sprang up. "Let me. I'll do that, as the servant is so long."
And she opened the cupboard. Among a miscellany of crocks therein was a blue-and-white cup and saucer, and a plate to match underneath it, that seemed out of place there. She lifted down the pile.
"Steady on!" he counselled her. "Why dun you choose that?"
"Because I like it," she replied, simply.
He was silenced. "That's a bit o' real Spode," he said, as she put it on the table and dusted the several pieces with a corner of the tablecloth.
"It won't be in any danger," she retorted, "until it comes to be washed up. So I'll stop afterwards and wash it up myself. There!"
"Now you can't find the teaspoons, miss!" he challenged her.