"Nothing. Is James all right?"
"He's asleep now, miss," answered the maid, closing her mouth for once in her life by some miracle of Love, and catching in her breath through her nose.
"That will do, Susannah," hastily said her mistress, who knew this symptom of old, and what it foreboded; "I'll ring if I want you. Bring up the punch things at ten, just as you always bring them."
Susannah left the room making stifled sounds, and Fanny, with Mrs Regan's fichu about her neck, attacked the sardine tin with the opener.
"Let me," said Charles.
"No, no; you open the champagne, and put the peaches on a plate, and I'll open the tins. Bring over the bread and butter and jam. I wish we had some ice for the champagne, but the fishmonger—forgot to send it. Bother this knife!"
She laboured away, with her cheeks flushed; a lock of black hair hanging loose lent her a distracted air, and made her so lovely in the eyes of Charles that he put the bread platter down on top of the butter plate, so that the butter pat clung to the bottom of the bread platter, and they had to scrape it off, one holding the platter, one scraping with the knife, and both hands touching.
"We have had that bread plate ever since I can remember," she said, as they seated themselves to the feast, "and I wouldn't have anything happen to it for earths, not that the butter will do it any harm. Isn't the text on it nice?"
Charles examined the bread platter gravely.