Mrs. Brown nodded.
"I'm not sorry now we had to have him here," she admitted, then added: "As boys go, he's better than most; and I'll say this for him, he never answers me back."
"He's a dear boy!" declared Mrs. Dingle. "I often think how his poor mother must have loved him. Ah, here is May!"
The little girl was looking in at the window.
"The boys want to know if it's nearly teatime," she said.
"Yes," replied her grandmother; "by the time they've been in and washed their hands tea will be ready."
May disappeared, returning ten minutes later with her grandfather and the boys. Mrs. Brown had cleared away her ironing things and was putting the last touches to the tea-table whilst she kept an eye on her daughter, who was measuring the tea into the tea-pot.
"That will do, Elizabeth," she said.
"All right, mother," Mrs. Dingle answered; "I haven't put one more spoonful than you told me to."
"Elizabeth's a capital tea-maker," William Brown remarked, smiling; "she could always put more tea in a spoon without over-filling it than anyone I ever knew."