The Misses Moffat were greatly flustered, for Mr. and Mrs. Dewar were also to be of the party, and to entertain two gentlemen at once was an unheard-of plunge into the wildest dissipation.
They paid innumerable visits of inspection to their little dining-room, where the tea-table, laid early in the afternoon, positively groaned under its load of dainties. No less than four different kinds of jam gleamed jewel-like, each in a cut-glass dish, at the four corners of the table: while cookies, soda scones, dropped scones, short bread, and the cream cakes, so appreciated by Montagu, were piled up in abundance on the various plates. In the centre of the table was a large épergne arranged with flowers by Miss Jeanie's artistic hands. These preparations all completed, there yet remained the arrangement of the guests at table.
"You see, me dear," said Miss Maggie, anxiously, "we must ask Mr. Dewar to take the foot of the table because he's the minister, and will ask the blessing. But the question is, where'll we put Mr. Wycherly? Because, you see, whoever sits by Mr. Wycherly will get a gentleman on either side, which doesn't seem quite fair somehow. If we put him on my right hand and give him Mrs. Dewar for a partner, then she'll be seated next her husband, and that doesn't seem quite correct; and yet, if we put Miss Esperance Bethune there, that's not right, either, and her seeing him every day."
"Don't you think," Miss Jeanie suggested, "that he'd better sit on your right hand and Mrs. Dewar on your left, with Miss Bethune between Mr. and Mrs. Dewar, and I'll separate the gentlemen?"
"We mustn't think of ourselves on occasions like these," Miss Maggie said, with just a tinge of reproof in her voice; "it's not a matter to be settled hastily."
"Well, there's not many ways we can sit unless you give up having Mr. Dewar at the bottom of the table," Miss Jeanie responded sharply.
"That," Miss Maggie replied solemnly, "is a necessity—because of the blessing."
So, after all, Miss Jeanie had it her way.
Mr. Wycherly had assuredly never been at a similar tea-party.
At the very beginning of the meal his polite commonplaces to Miss Maggie were drowned by the minister's voice, as with uplifted hand he asked a lengthy blessing. Mr. Wycherly was rather startled, but he bent his head decorously, and when it was over continued his sentence where he had broken off.