While Mr. Somers was enjoying his cup of unexpected tea at Mrs. Derrick's, Squire Deacon and Miss Cilly had a sociable tête-à-tête over theirs; for Joe Deacon, who was in the full enjoyment of some fourteen years of boyhood, scarcely made a third in the conversation until his appetite was satisfied.
Conversation indeed hardly existed during the first portion of the meal. Miss Cilly poured out her tea and broke her biscuit with a certain prim sort of elegance which belonged to that young lady—as at least she believed. But sipping tea and nibbling biscuit went on in company with thoughts.
"Sam, what are you bothering yourself about Mr. Linden for?"
"How long since you was made a trustee?" said the Squire, beginning his sentence with an untranslatable sort of grunt, and ending it in his teacup.
"Give us the sugar bowl down this way, Cilly," said Joe,—"this apple sarce is as sour as sixty."
"I've been your trustee ever since you was up to anything," said his sister. "Come Sam—don't you begin now. What's made you so crusty?"
"It aint the worst thing to be crusty," said the Squire, while Joe started up and seized the sugar bowl. "Shews a man's more'n half baked, any how."
Miss Cilly vouchsafed a rather sour smile to these manifestations of disposition on the part of both her brothers.
"Well, what has he done?"
"Sure enough," said the Squire, (he kept his small stock of big words for company) "what has he done? That's just what I can't find out."