"Thank you, my dear. I shall be much obliged; I can't bear to leave off this sock now I have got so far. And who, then, used to pour out tea for you at your own home?"
"Nurse, always. And for the last six months, ever since"—with a gentle sigh—"poor papa's death, Aunt Priscilla."
"That is Miss Chesney?"
"Yes. But tea was never nice with Aunt Priscilla; she liked it weak, because of her nerves, she said (though I don't think she had many), and she always would use the biggest cups in the house, even in the evening. There never," says Lilian, solemnly, "was any one so odd as my Aunt Priscilla. Though we had several of the loveliest sets of china in the world, she never would use them, and always preferred a horrid glaring set of blue and gold that was my detestation. Taffy and I were going to smash them all one day right off, but then we thought it would be shabby, she had placed her affections so firmly on them. Is your tea quite right, Lady Chetwoode—auntie, I mean,"—with a bright smile,—"or do you want any more sugar?"
"It is quite right, thank you, dear."
"Mine is without exception the most delicious cup of tea I ever tasted," says Cyril, with intense conviction. Whereat Lilian laughs and promises him as many more as he can drink.
"Will you not give me one?" says Guy, who has risen and is standing beside her, looking down upon her lovely face with a strange expression in his eyes.
How pretty she looks pouring out the tea, with that little assumption of importance about her! How deftly her slender fingers move among the cups, how firmly they close around the handle of the quaint old teapot!
A lump of sugar falls with a small crash into the tray. It is a refractory lump, and runs in and out among the china and the silver jugs, refusing to be captured by the tongs. Lilian, losing patience (her stock of it is small), lays down the useless tongs, and taking up the lump between a dainty finger and thumb, transfers it triumphantly to her own cup.
"Well caught," says Cyril, laughing, while it suddenly occurs to Guy that Florence would have died before she would have done such a thing. The sugar-tongs was made to pick up the sugar, therefore it would be a flagrant breach of system to use anything else, and of all other things one's fingers. Oh, horrible thought!