"It is not," he replied. "This is another form of the same advertisement. This is some which was picked four hundred years ago."
"Oh," I said, "I dislike tea more than I can tell you. But I should like to drink a cup of that."
The stuff was horrible. It was not strong, but it had an unnameable puckering quality. I tasted it, and waited.
"Do you like it?" he asked eagerly.
"It is," I said, "the worst tea I have ever tasted in my whole life. I feel as if I had been shirred."
He burst into laughter.
"So I think," he said, "but lovely ladies drink it down and pretend to like it, just because I tell 'em what it is. I'm glad you hate it."
He held the tin over the coals.
"Shall I burn it?" he asked. "To the tune of 'What horrid humbugs lovely ladies are'?"