"Well, not exactly fond of it, my dear," stammered the Captain. "Really I don't care for whisky, but I like the feeling it gives me."
"I don't like hypocrisy, and I dislike still more the feeling it gives me. In future we will drink together. When you take your glass of whisky, I will have a cup of coffee," she replied.
After the arrival of Miss Yard at Windward House, she too was offered the cup, but declined, as she abhorred coffee.
"But it's cocoa," explained Kezia.
"Why do you call it coffee then?" asked Miss Yard, who had quite enough to perplex her poor brain without this unnecessary difficulty.
"Mrs. Drake used to have coffee once, but, as she never cared for it much, she took to cocoa. She has drunk cocoa for twenty years, but we always call it coffee."
Bessie and Robert stayed every evening to drink coffee, which was generally cocoa, but sometimes beer. One evening Nellie was so late that Kezia declared she should wait for her no longer. It was Thursday, and Nellie, who sang in the choir, had gone out to attend the weekly practice. Suddenly Robert withdrew his head from a steaming bowl and declared he heard voices in the garden. All listened, and presently Nellie's laughter passed in at the back door, which stood open as the night was warm, but Nellie did not accompany it.
Robert made a signal to the others, and they tiptoed out like so many conspirators, to discover the young lady enjoying a confidential conversation with somebody else who sang in the choir, and whose voice had been described by the schoolmaster-organist as a promising baritone. It looked as if it was promising then.
A few minutes later Kezia and Bessie appeared in the parlour, and asked Mrs. Drake if she had any objection to Sidney Brock drinking a cup of coffee.
"Who is Sidney Brock?" demanded Mrs. Drake, like a learned judge of the King's Bench.