The lips of Constable Maclean were dry, his tongue clove to the roof of an amazingly capacious mouth. As for Miss Sanderson, mere silence began to achieve wonders in the way of gentle, smiling irony. But the hostess was more humane. For one thing she was married, and although Fate had been cruel, she had a sacred instinct which made her regard every young man as a boy of her own.
Every moment the situation became more delicate, but Eliza’s handling of it was superb. She brewed a fresh cup of tea for Constable Maclean, and then plied the toasting-fork to such purpose that the young man became so busy devouring muffins that for a time he forgot his shame. Eliza could toast and butter a muffin with anyone, Constable Maclean could eat a muffin with anyone—thus things began to go better. And when, without turning a hair, the young man entered upon his third muffin, Miss Sanderson dramatically unbent.
“Allow me to give you another cup of tea.” The voice was melody.
A succession of guttural noises, which might be interpreted as “Thank ye kindly, miss,” having come apparently from the boots of Constable Maclean, Miss Harriet Sanderson handed him a second cup of tea.
Still, the conversation did not prosper. But the perfect hostess, kneeling before the fire in order to toast muffin the fifth, had still her best card to play. It was the ace of trumps, in fact, and when she rose to spread butter over a sizzling, delicious, corrugated surface, she decided that the time had come to make use of it.
Perhaps the factor in the situation which moved her to this step was that only one muffin now remained for her husband when he came off duty half-an-hour hence, and that his young colleague of the X Division seemed ready to go on devouring them until the crack of doom.
“That reminds me,” Eliza suddenly remarked as she cut the fifth muffin in half, “I promised Mrs. Norris I would go across after tea to have a look at her latest.”
“You are not going out, Eliza, such a night as this?” said Harriet in a voice of consternation.
“A promise is a promise, my dear, you know that. Mrs. Norris has just had her sixth—the sweetest little boy. Some people have all the luck.”
“But the fog—you can’t see a yard in front of you!”