“Oh, please don’t bother!”
“We are just going to have tea, Mrs. Canterton.”
Eve gave her mother a warning look, but Mrs. Carfax never noticed other people’s faces.
“Tell Nellie, dear.”
Eve walked off to the house, chiefly conscious of the fact that there was no cake for tea. How utterly absurd it was that one should chafe over such trifles. But then, with women like Mrs. Canterton, it was necessary to have one’s pride dressed to the very last button.
Two extra chairs and tea arrived. The conversation was never in danger of death when Gertrude Canterton was responsible for keeping up a babble of sound. If the other people were mute and reticent, she talked about herself and her multifarious activities. These filled all gaps.
“I must say I like having tea in the garden. You are, really, most sheltered here. Sugar? No, I don’t take sugar in tea—only in coffee, thank you.”
“It does rather spoil the flavour.”
“We have a very exquisite tea sent straight to us from a friend of my husband’s in Ceylon. It rather spoils me, and I have got out of the way of taking sugar. How particular we become, don’t we? It is so easy to become selfish. That reminds me. I want to interest our neighbourhood in a society that has been started in London. What a problem London is.”
Mrs. Carfax cooed sympathetically.