"It won't shoot; it will only lunch," I whispered back.
Somehow, my spirits had risen. I loved to sit and laugh there with—Antony. (I think of him as Antony, now we are cousins, I must remember.)
I poured out the blackest tea I could, and inadvertently put a lump of sugar into it. I am afraid I was not attending.
Mr. McCormack, a big, burly youth, with a red face and fearfully nervous manners, stood first on one foot, then on the other, while he waited for the cup, which, eventually, he took back to Mrs. Dodd.
All this time Antony was sitting talking to me in his delightfully lazy way, quite undisturbed by any one else in the room. He has exactly grandmamma's manner of finding a general company simply furniture.
He was just telling an amusing story of the house in Scotland he had come from, when an explosion happened at the other side of the fireplace. Loud coughing and choking, mixed with a clatter of teaspoons and china—and, amid a terrified silence, the fog-horn exclaimed:
"Surely, Mrs. Gussie, I told you plain enough that sugar in my tea makes me sick."
I apologized as well as I could, and repaired my want of attention, and then I felt my other guests must claim me, so I whispered to Antony:
"Do go and talk to Lady Wakely, please. You are preventing me from doing my duty! I am listening to you instead."
"Virtuous Comtesse!"