So No. 8 sat down again, calling out, in an almost stuttering hurry, “You may keep it all, Aunt Judy, I don’t want any more.”
But neither did Aunt Judy, after she had given it one taste; so she put the cup down, thanking No. 8 very much, but pulling such a funny face, that it set the laugh going once more; in the middle of which No. 4 dropped an additional lump of sugar into the rejected buff-coloured mixture, a proceeding which evidently gave No. 8 a new relish for the beverage.
Aunt Judy had got beyond the age when cowslip-tea was looked upon as one of the treats of life; and she had not, on the other hand, lived long enough to love the taste of it for the memory’s sake of the enjoyment it once afforded.
Not but what we are obliged to admit that cowslip-tea is one of those things which, even in the most enthusiastic days of youth, just falls short of the absolute perfection one expects from it.
Even under those most favourable circumstances of having had the delightful gathering of the flowers in the sweet sunny fields—the picking of them in the happy holiday afternoon—the permission to use the best doll’s tea-service for the feast—the loan of a nice white table-cloth—and the present of half-a-dozen pewter knives and forks to fancy-cut the biscuits with—nay, even in spite of the addition of well-filled doll’s sugar-pots and cream-jugs—cowslip-tea always seems to want either a leetle more or a leetle less sugar—or a leetle more or a leetle less cream—or to be a leetle more or a leetle less strong—to turn it into that complete nectar which, of course, it really is.
On the present occasion, however, the children had clearly got hold of some other source of enjoyment over the annual cowslip-tea feast, besides the beverage itself; and Aunt Judy, glad to see them so safely happy, went off to her business at the wardrobe, while the little ones resumed their game.
“Very extraordinary, indeed, ma’am!” began one of the fancy old ladies, in a completely fancy voice, a little affected, or so. “Most extraordinary, ma’am, I may say!”
(Here there was a renewed giggle from No. 4, which she carefully smothered in her handkerchief.)
“But still I think I can tell you of something more extraordinary still!”
The speaker having at this point refreshed his ideas by a sip of the pale-coloured tea, and the other ladies having laughed heartily in anticipation of the fun that was coming, one of them observed:—