The company sat down to tea. Cicely and Brian helped to wait, flitting here and there, talking to everybody. Nick said in a loud voice: “I be going to have a rare gorger.”
“I like to see ’em tuck in,” said Brian to Cicely.
“I don’t know. It looks, doesn’t it, as if they didn’t have quite enough at home?”
After tea came the solemn bestowal of red cloaks, pounds of tea, and the gills of gin furtively bestowed upon the old women. Cicely found herself near Dr. Pawley.
“Timothy Farleigh isn’t here,” she said. “Is he ill?”
“I don’t think so.”
Cicely noticed an accent of restraint. She continued quickly: “I can’t remember his ever coming to our bun-feasts, can you?” Pawley remained silent. Cicely decided that something was eluding her.
“Is there any reason why he shouldn’t come?”
Her persistence amused and distressed an old friend. Obviously, she was on the hunt for accurate information. If he put her off a hot scent, she would return to it. And yet he shrank from telling the truth, although well aware that it would come more gently from his lips than from any others. Suddenly, so it seemed to him, a jolly girl had bloomed into a woman. He answered reluctantly:
“Yes.”