“Oh, there you are. What happened? What kept you? The tea’s here, you see. I’ve just sent Antonio off for the hot water. Isn’t it extraordinary? I must have told him about it sixty times at least, and still he doesn’t bring it. Thank you. That’s very nice. One does just feel the air when one bends forward.”
“Thanks.” He took his tea and sat down in the other chair. “No, nothing to eat.”
“Oh do! Just one, you had so little at lunch and it’s hours before dinner.”
Her shawl dropped off as she bent forward to hand him the biscuits. He took one and put it in his saucer.
“Oh, those trees along the drive,” she cried, “I could look at them for ever. They are like the most exquisite huge ferns. And you see that one with the grey-silver bark and the clusters of cream coloured flowers, I pulled down a head of them yesterday to smell and the scent”—she shut her eyes at the memory and her voice thinned away, faint, airy—“was like freshly ground nutmegs.” A little pause. She turned to him and smiled. “You do know what nutmegs smell like—do you, Robert?”
And he smiled back at her. “Now how am I going to prove to you that I do?”
Back came Antonio with not only the hot water—with letters on a salver and three rolls of paper.
“Oh, the post! Oh, how lovely! Oh, Robert, they mustn’t be all for you! Have they just come, Antonio?” Her thin hands flew up and hovered over the letters that Antonio offered her, bending forward.
“Just this moment, Signora,” grinned Antonio. “I took-a them from the postman myself. I made-a the postman give them for me.”
“Noble Antonio!” laughed she. “There—those are mine, Robert; the rest are yours.”