What sweet eyes she had, what incredibly sweet eyes, if only they weren’t so tired....
‘But you must sit down,’ she went on. ‘You’re so enormous that it hurts my neck to have to look up at you.’
He threw himself into the chair next to her. ‘What I want to know is——’ he began, leaning forward.
He broke off as the door opened, and Mrs. Mitcham came in with the tea.
‘Go on,’ said Catherine encouragingly. ‘Unless it’s something overwhelmingly indiscreet.’
‘Well, I was only going to ask you—do you like tubes?’
She laughed. She was always laughing. ‘No,’ she said, pouring out the tea.
The teapot was impressive; all the tea arrangements were impressive, except the part you ate. On that had descended a severely restraining hand, thinning the butter on the bread, withholding the currants from the cake. Not that Christopher saw anything of this, because he saw only Catherine; but afterwards, when he went over the visit in his head, he somehow was aware of a curious contrast between the tea and the picture frames.
‘Then why do you go in them?’ he asked, Mrs. Mitcham having gone again and shut the door.
‘Because they’re cheap.’