“No honey, I thank you, Miss Hatton—but I likes my tea to lay for a good eight or ten minutes arter it is made. I will own that I likes it bitter; flavoured with one spoonful of thick rich cream and three good lumps of castor sugar. Jones goes in for four lumps, but I say so much sugar is apt to lay heavy, so three’s my quantity. I’ll trouble you not to give me more than one teaspoonful of cream, Mrs Royal.”
“Sech strong tea is wonderful bad for the narves,” said Miss Hatton. “May I ask, miss,” turning to Jill, “’ow you takes it in the City? I’m told, but I don’t know ef it’s true, that you mostly uses our tea-leaves over agen.”
“I don’t think it’s true,” replied Jill, “though maybe there air some folks poor enough even for that.” She raised her great dark eyes as she spoke, and looked sadly at Miss Hatton.
The spinster turned away with a toss of her head. “Why, she’s foreign,” she muttered. “It’s worse even than I feared.”
“I have no doubt, miss, whatever, that you always drinks the best o’ tea,” said Hibberty Jones with a gallant bow. “So purty a bit of a young gel couldn’t but have the werry best.”
“Quite so—I agrees with you, Mr Jones,” said Mr Peters.
The women could not forbear snorting audibly, and Miss Hatton in her agitation dropped a spoonful of honey on the white cloth, and the next moment one of the delicate white saucers with the convolvulus lying across its smooth surface had been pushed by her awkward elbow on to the floor. It lay there in shivers. Aunt Hannah gave an unearthly groan, and Silas felt the purple colour of rage dyeing his face.
“Don’t say a word, Silas,” said Jill in a soft tone.
She sprang lightly to her feet, ran round to Miss Hatton’s side, picked up the broken crockery, which she put out of sight, placed another saucer beside Miss Hatton’s plate, and returned to her place by Silas.
Her little action was so swift and graceful, and the lovely colour which mantled her cheeks was so becoming, that the three men could not help expressing their approval by a low sort of underground cheer.