Then she burst into the kitchen unexpectedly, with a swish of silk that was like the retreat of waves down the shingle of some Atlantic shore.
"My dear uncle," she protested, "please do make yourself scarce. You are in my way, and I'm very busy."
She went to the cupboard and snatched at some plates, two of which she dropped on the table, and three of which she took into the kitchen.
"Have ye got all as ye want?" he questioned her politely, anxious to be of assistance.
"Everything!" she answered, positively, and with just the least hint of an intention to crush him.
"Have ye indeed!"
He did not utter this exclamation aloud; but with it he applied balm to his secret breast. For he still remembered, being an old man, her crushing him in the park, and the peril of another crushing roused the male in him. And it was with a sardonic and cruel satisfaction that he applied such balm to his secret breast. The truth was, he knew that she had not got all she wanted. He knew that, despite her extraordinary capableness (of which she was rather vain), despite her ability to calculate mentally the interest on eighty-nine pounds for six months at four-and-a-half per cent., she could not possibly prepare the tea without coming to him and confessing to him that she had been mistaken, and that she had not got everything she wanted. She would be compelled to humble herself before him—were it ever so little. He was a hard old man, and the prospect of this humbling gave him pleasure (I regret to say).
You cannot have tea without tea-leaves; and James Ollerenshaw kept the tea-leaves in a tea-caddy, locked, in his front room. He had an extravagant taste in tea. He fancied China tea; and he fancied China tea that cost five shillings a pound. He was the last person to leave China tea at five shillings a pound to the economic prudence of a Mrs. Butt. Every day Mrs. Butt brought to him the teapot (warmed) and a teaspoon, and he unlocked the tea-caddy, dispensed the right quantity of tea, and relocked the tea-caddy.
There was no other tea in the house. So with a merry heart the callous fellow (shamefully delighting in the imminent downfall of a fellow-creature—and that a woman!) went into the front room as he had been bidden. On one of the family of chairs, in a corner, was a black octagonal case. He opened this case, which was not locked, and drew from it a concertina, all inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Then he went to the desk, and from under a pile of rent books he extracted several pieces of music, and selected one. This selected piece he reared up on the mantelpiece against two brass candlesticks. It was obvious, from the certainty and ease of his movements, that he had the habit of lodging pieces of music against those two brass candlesticks. The music bore the illustrious name of George Frederick Handel.
Then he put on a pair of spectacles which were lying on the mantelpiece, and balanced them on the end of his nose. Finally he adjusted his little hands to the straps of the concertina. You might imagine that he would instantly dissolve into melody. Not at all. He glanced at the page of music first through his spectacles, and then, bending forward his head, over his spectacles. Then he put down the concertina, gingerly, on a chair, and moved the music half-an-inch (perhaps five-eighths) to the left. He resumed the concertina, and was on the very point of song, when he put down the concertina for the second time, and moved the tassel of his Turkish cap from the neighbourhood of his left ear to the neighbourhood of his right ear. Then, with a cough, he resumed the concertina once more, and embarked upon the interpretation of Handel.