“There wasn’t; but Bridget thinks that any air that comes in through an open window is a blast, even if it’s the middle of summer. Have you everything you want, Miss Linton? I’m sure you’ll all be famished for your tea, and I’ll run and see to it.”
“I think this is a jolly place,” Norah said, as they gathered, ten minutes later, round a table that might certainly have groaned under its load of good things, had it not been made of exceedingly solid old mahogany. “It’s not a bit like a boarding-house, is it? There’s such a home-y feel about it.”
“There’s a home-y look about this table,” Jim averred. “I haven’t seen anything like it since we left Billabong.”
There were crusty loaves of Irish soda-bread, which is better than anything else except the home-made bread of Australia, heaps of brown, crisp scones, buttered hot-cakes, and glass dishes with ruby-coloured jams. A bowl of cream was in the middle, and a dish of rich dark honey in the comb—not like the anæmic honey one buys in London, which is made by fat and lazy bees out of dishes of sugar and water, and tastes like it. The Irish bees had worked over miles of heathery moorland, and their honey held something of the heather’s fresh sweetness.
“Think of the trenches—and bully beef!” ejaculated Wally. “I say, what’s this?”
He had uncovered a smoking plateful of a queer flat substance, on which attention was immediately focussed.
“Does one eat it?” Norah queried.
“Blessed if I know,” Jim answered. “It looks a bit queer.”
Light suddenly illumined Mr. Linton.
“Bless us, that’s potato-cake!” he exclaimed. “I haven’t tasted it for many a year, and it’s one of the best things going. It ought to be eaten so hot that it burns the mouth, so I advise you not to lose time.’ He helped himself, declaring that no considerations of etiquette were to stand in the way of the proper temperature of a potato-cake, and the others somewhat doubtfully followed his example. In a very short time the plate was empty.