"Let me have a bit, will you? I haven't had it like that since I was a kid and my old nurse used to make it."
Presently, with his teeth stuck together and his fingers all sticky, he seemed supremely happy.
"I prefer toffee the proper way," observed the Atom, nose in air. "I'm not a baby to want it all soft for my teeth!"
"Ah," said Ted, "you will soon, when your milk teeth begin to wabble before they fall out."
The Atom was observed surreptitiously feeling her little white teeth.
"Nell," quoth Denis, "I've just washed my hands. Feed me, asthore. Think I'm a little, little birdie—ah!"
He stopped abruptly, and his cheek shone round and tight over Nell's liberal interpretation of his request. But, liberal as it was, it did not seem to affect his appetite for tea. Nell's cakes all vanished; more toast had to be made, and Ted called down a good deal of laughter at his clumsiness over the business of toasting. Once Miss Kezia sent Sarah up to request that there should be "less noise." Ted's face of whimsical amusement delighted Nell.
Denis issued a mandate that it should be a "rhyming tea." He explained to Ted:—
"You mustn't speak except in rhyme. Everything you say must rhyme somehow—twig?"
"Oh, I say," Ted's eyebrows were stuck up. "I can't, you know! Never made a rhyme in my life!"