The round table in the middle of the room was spread, in Louisa’s accustomed fashion, as if for breakfast, and in the centre was placed a cake, coldly decked in the silver paper trappings that it had long worn in the grocer’s window.
“’Twas well for you you didn’t!” said Francie, with, as it seemed to Christopher, a most familiar and challenging laugh.
“Why?” inquired Hawkins, looking at her with a responsive eye. “What would you have done?”
“Plenty,” returned Francie unhesitatingly; “enough to make you sorry anyway!”
Mr. Hawkins looked delighted, and was opening his mouth for a suitable rejoinder, when Miss Mullen struck in sharply:
“Francie, go tell Louisa that I suppose she expects us to stir our tea with our fingers, for there’s not a spoon on the table.”
“Oh, let me go,” said Hawkins, springing to open the door; “I know Louisa; she was very kind to me just now. She hunted all the cats out of the room.” Francie was already in the hall, and he followed her.
The search for Louisa was lengthy, involving much calling for her by Francie, with falsetto imitations by Mr. Hawkins, and finally a pause, during which it might be presumed that the pantry was being explored. Pamela brought her chair nearer to Miss Mullen, who had begun wrathfully to stir her tea with the sugar-tongs, and entered upon a soothing line of questions as to the health and number of the cats; and Christopher, having cut the grocer’s cake, and found that it was the usual conglomerate of tallow, saw-dust, bad eggs, and gravel, devoted himself to thick bread and butter, and to conversation with Miss Hope-Drummond. The period of second cups was approaching, when laughter, and a jingle of falling silver in the hall, told that the search for Louisa was concluded, and Francie and Mr. Hawkins re-entered the drawing-room, the latter endeavouring, not unsuccessfully, to play the bones with four of Charlotte’s best electro-plated teaspoons, while his brown boots moved in the furtive rhythm of an imaginary break-down. Miss Mullen did not even raise her eyes, and Christopher and Miss Hope-Drummond continued their conversation unmoved; only Pamela acknowledged the histrionic intention with a sympathetic but nervous smile. Pamela’s finger was always instinctively on the pulse of the person to whom she was talking, and she knew better than either Francie or Hawkins that they were in disgrace.
“I’d be obliged to you for those teaspoons, Mr. Hawkins, when you’ve quite done with them,” said Charlotte, with an ugly look at the chief offender’s self-satisfied countenance; “it’s a good thing no one except myself takes sugar in their tea.”
“We couldn’t help it,” replied Mr. Hawkins, unabashed; “Louisa was out for a walk with her young man, and Miss Fitzpatrick and I had to polish up the teaspoons ourselves.”