“We used to sometimes squeeze lemon into tea, a Russian boy and I,” volunteered Chavvy, who was bravely hiding a heart that ached, Bertram having that afternoon confessed his plans; “he had such melancholy eyes, and his father was a convict,” attempting by this recital to rouse her Pierrot to some sort of jealousy. “They call it sayonara,” she added, in somewhat incorrect explanation of the tea.
Miss Esther said that she had no patience with heathen habits, and that everybody knew they were only imitations of honest English tea-drinking, which was quite good enough for her, thank you, without squeezing ‘sayonara’ into her cup. “Though I daresay you’ll call me narrow-minded, Mr. Heron,” drawing Stuart into the conversation, that he might not feel shy.
Animated by an Encyclopædic spirit very foreign to his nature, Stuart explained drily the difference between ‘samovar’ and ‘sayonara’—“which happens to be Japanese for ‘farewell.’”
“That’s just as bad,” pronounced Miss Esther. While Chavvy murmured in timid apology for her error: “I was thinking of Port Arthur,” and subsided altogether.
Stuart looked up, relieved, at Peter’s entrance—then bit his lip in annoyance. She had changed into a thin crêpe frock; he felt sure it was her ‘best,’ donned for his benefit. As a matter of fact, Peter’s garments had been soaked through, and this particular dress was quickest and easiest for her to fasten unaided; but, thoroughly jarred by his surroundings, he chose to see her too tainted by Suburbanism.
Miss Esther filled and refilled cups; sent Peter for more hot water; maintained a flow of lofty but gracious chatter, thinking privately the while that not often had she to entertain so leaden a tea-party; why, the Lorrimers’ Saturday tea-and-tennis institution held a hundred times as much of innocent mirth. But, then, Mr. Lorrimer himself was sufficient of a humorist to make any party ‘go.’
Stuart she considered ‘difficult.’ All young men were more or less so, but she had a method of taming their barbarism never known to fail: on their second introduction to Bloemfontein she would say carelessly: “Now please remember that you can smoke all over the house here—no forbidden ground,” and having found the key to their mysterious masculinity, would watch them in grateful enjoyment of their privilege: “They appreciate it, poor fellows; of course at home they’re never allowed it”—and: “You spoil them, Esther,” usually the conclusion of these remarks.
But Stuart failed to respond to treatment. Notwithstanding he had smoked a horrid black pipe up and down the stairs and in Miss Esther’s own sitting-room—yet here he sat morose and glum as any stranger, not a patch in manners on that nice Mr. St. Quentin who sometimes came.
Indeed, it was curious to observe how Miss Worthing’s personality, the least arresting of any present, reduced every other member to a polite and stricken level of uncommunicativeness. Miss Esther, in her own setting, and all her convictions securely buttoned in waterproof, dominated Stuart and Bertram, Peter and Chavvy, to the entire extinction of their own turbulence; so that presently the two men were exchanging decorous views on the political situation, while Peter and Chavvy, like acolytes, supported Miss Esther with seed-cake and bread-and-butter.
“If you have finished, Peter, you can take Mr. Heron into the drawing-room. I told them to light a fire, although this is the end of June, but then I always say be warm when you are cold and never mind the time of year.”