"Yes, if you please," she heard him say then. "English breakfast tea, as strong as possible. No cream, but lemon, yes. Who plays there?"
"My sister," said Polly proudly. "She sings, too, and she makes up lovely music to words she writes; poetry, you know. She's gifted."
"Poor child! What age has she?" asked the man.
"Thirteen, just," said Polly. "I'll get your tea."
"You have a queer little kindergarten tea room," remarked the singular man as Happie passed him. "I hear small feet and small voices above stairs."
"A dancing school, but that is not ours," replied Happie. But it seemed to her that her answer fell on ears that did not hear, for there was no response in the melancholy face that turned again towards Laura, as the long hand went up to the drooping moustaches and the man waited for his tea.
He sat there a long time. Laura played on, at first with an eye to applause, but after a while losing herself in her music, as she always did, and improvising, entirely forgetful of hearers. She was a puzzling mixture to downright Happie, with her posing, her affectations, her selfishness, and yet her genuine passion for music and her extraordinary talents.
The strange man lingering so long made Margery and Happie so uneasy that Margery at last called Laura from the piano, but still he sat there, drinking so much tea that Gretta became uneasy from another cause.
"I shouldn't leave him have it," she said with a rare relapse into her dialect, caused by extreme earnestness. "He'll get down sick for us, right here. He acts behexed."