"The tea isn't drawn. Let it rest a bit—why, it's the color of straw."
"This peculiar tea is always of a light color," replied Mrs. Bertram, her sallow face growing darkly red. "I hope you will appreciate it; but perhaps it is a matter of training. It is, however, I assure you, quite the vogue among my friends in London."
Mrs. Meadowsweet felt crushed. She received the cup of flavorless, half-cold liquid presented to her in a subdued spirit, sipped it with the air of a martyr, and devoutly wished herself back again in the Gray House.
Mrs. Bertram knew perfectly well that her guest thought the tea detestable and the cake stale. It was as necessary for people of Mrs. Meadowsweet's class to go in for strong tea and high living as it was for people of Mrs. Bertram's class to aspire to faded felt in the matter of carpets, and water bewitched in the shape of tea. Each after her kind, Mrs. Bertram murmured. But as she had an object in view it was necessary for her to earn the good-will of the well-to-do widow.
Accordingly, when the slender meal came to an end, and the two ladies found themselves under the shelter of the friendly oak-tree, matters went more smoothly. Mrs. Bertram put her guest into an excellent humor by bestowing some cordial praise upon Beatrice.
"She is not like you," continued the good lady, with some naïveté.
"No, no," responded the gratified mother. "And sorry I'd be to think that Beatrice took after me. I'm commonplace. Mrs. Bertram. I have no figure to boast of, nor much of a face either. What he saw to like in me, poor man, has puzzled my brain a score and score of times. Kind and affectionate he ever was, but he couldn't but own, as own I did for him, that I was a cut below him. Beatrice features her father, Mrs. Bertram, both in mind and body."
Mrs. Bertram murmured some compliment about the mother's kind heart, and then turned to a subject which is known to be of infallible interest to all ladies. She spoke of her ailments.
Mrs. Meadowsweet beamed all over when this subject came on the tapis. She even laid her fat hand on Mrs. Bertram's lap.
"Now, did you ever try Eleazer Macjone's Pills of Life?" she asked. "I always have a lot of them in the house; and I assure you, Mrs. Bertram, they are worth all the doctor's messes put together; for years I have taken the pills, and it's a positive fact that they're made to fit the human body all round. Headaches—it's wonderful what Macjone's pills do for headaches. If you have a low, all-overish feeling, Macjone's pills pick you up directly. They are wonderful, too, for colds; and if there's any infection going they nip it in the bud. I wish you would try them, Mrs. Bertram; I know they'd pull you round, I'll send for a box for you with pleasure when I'm having my next chest of tea down from London. I always get my tea from London. I think what they sell here is little better than dishwater; so I say to Beatrice, 'Bee, my love, whatever happens, we'll get our tea from town."