"Shall I, Fay?" asked Annabel.
"Just as Reggie likes," replied my darling, with her lovely smile.
"Sweetheart, you are too tired to lift that heavy teapot. Let Annabel do it for you." The vessel in question was part of an extremely solid tea-service which had been presented to my father by an admiring constituency on the auspicious occasion of his marriage, and which resembled a flotilla of silver Dreadnoughts.
Fay laughed. "I think, as Reggie says, I had better not tackle the big teapot till it gets used to me: it might begin to buck or jib, and I'm sure I shouldn't have strength to hold it in if it did."
"It couldn't very well do that," said Annabel, taking her accustomed seat at the table, while Fay sat on the other side of me; "but it might overflow and trickle down the spout, as it is by no means a good pourer, and Jeavons always fills it too full." (Jeavons was our butler.) "I can't think why servants always make as much tea for three people as for half-a-dozen."
"I hate teapots that dribble down their chins," remarked Fay: "they are so messy."
Annabel gently corrected her. "I said spout, my dear, not chin. Teapots don't have chins. And now, you two, tell me all your adventures since I saw you last." Whereupon she characteristically proceeded to tell us all hers, and we neither of us could get a word in edgeways.
"And the garden is looking perfectly lovely," she concluded, after an exhaustive recital of the recent happenings of Restham. "I have had my own way with the forget-me-nots this year, and they are going to be a great success. Even Cutler now owns that he was wrong and I was right." Whereby I perceived that Cutler knew on which side of his bread the butter lay.
"Of course they are not in their full perfection yet," continued Annabel; "but they will be a sight when they are. You see, I was away when they were planted last year, and he didn't put them in nearly closely enough; but this year I superintended them myself."
"Then it is sure to be all right," I said.