If you want to know how fairies look when they are making hot-pot, you should have seen Angel's absorbed little shining face.
"Now, do be quiet, Henry. I'm busy. Why don't you get on with your work? I won't speak a word."
"Angel, dear, you might just as well stay and help me to eat it. I sha'n't do any work to-day, I know for certain. It's one of my bad days."
"Now, Henry, that's lazy. You mustn't give way like that. You'll make me wish I hadn't come. It's all my fault."
"No, really, dear, it isn't. I haven't done a stroke all morning--though I've sat with my pen for two hours. You might stay, Angel, just an hour or two."
"No, Henry; mother wants me back soon. She's house-cleaning. And besides, I mustn't. No--no--you see I've nearly finished now--see! Get me the salt and pepper. There now--that looks nice, doesn't it? Now aren't I a good little housewife?"
"You would be, if you'd only stay. Do stay, Angel. Really, darling, it will be all the same if you go. I know I shall do nothing. Look at my morning's work, and he brought her a sheet of paper containing two lines and a half of new-born prose, one line and a half of which was plentifully scratched out. To this argument he added two or three persuasive embraces.
"It's really true, Henry? Well, of course, I oughtn't; but if you can't work, of course you can't. And you must have a little rest sometimes, I know. Well, then, I'll stay; but only till we've finished lunch, you know, and we must have it early. I won't stay a minute past two o'clock, do you hear? And now I'll run along with this to Mrs. Glass."
When Angel had gone promptly at three, as likely as not another step would be heard coming down the passage, and a feminine rustle, suggesting a fuller foliage of skirts, pause outside the door, then a sort of brotherly-sisterly knock.
"Esther! Why, you've just missed Angel; what a pity!"