"Not any," he replied, gravely. "Never."
Swiftly she picked up the little silver sugar jar; she cast an investigative eye up at the solemn visage of the butler.
"Mr. Tom can have some of ours, can't he, Woberts?" she inquired, gravely tendering the bowl to Blake, who accepted it just as gravely.
"I thank you," he said, very seriously. "It is kind of you…. But, do you know, I was speaking rather of figurative sugar."
The child shook her head, perplexedly.
"I don't think we have that kind," she ventured. "We have powdered sugar, and loaf sugar, and gran—granulated," she syllablized it, calling it "gran-u-lat-ed"—"and we have pulverized sugar, too. But I don't believe we have fig—the kind you said…. I'm sorry."
He smiled a little—a smile of the lips.
"It doesn't matter," he said, slowly. "Really it doesn't. You know I haven't had any for so long that I've quite forgotten the taste of it…. Where's daddy this morning?"
"Daddy and mother dear are saying goodbye to Auntie," the child replied, making in the oatmeal before her a miniature Panama Canal and watching the thick cream trickle slowly from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
Blake turned to the butler.