ts. Still, he was large, with side
whiskers, even if his clean-shaven mouth was weak and little. I sat
among these people on a high, hard, early Gregorian chair, trying to
exist, like a feeble seedling amidst great rocks, and my mother sat
with an eye upon me, resolute to suppress the slightest manifestation
of vitality. It was hard on me, but perhaps it was also hard upon
these rather over-fed, ageing, pretending people, that my youthful
restlessness and rebellious unbelieving eyes should be thrust in among
their dignities.

Tea lasted for nearly three-quarters of an hour, and I sat it out
perforce; and day after day the talk was exactly the same.

"Sugar, Mrs. Mackridge?" my mother used to ask.

"Sugar, Mrs. Latude-Fernay?"

The word sugar would stir the mind of Mrs. Mackridge. "They say," she
would begin, issuing her proclamation--at least half her sentences began
"they say"--"sugar is fatt-an-ing, nowadays. Many of the best people do
not take it at all."

"Not with their tea, ma'am," said Rabbits intelligently.

"Not with anything," said Mrs. Mackridge, with an air of crushing
repartee, and drank.

"What won't they say next?" said Miss Fison.

"They do say such things!" said Mrs. Booch.

"They say," said Mrs. Mackridge, inflexibly, "the doctors are not
recomm-an-ding it now."

My Mother: "No, ma'am?"

Mrs. Mackridge: "No, ma'am."

Then, to the table at large: "Poor Sir Roderick, before he died,
consumed great quan-ta-ties of sugar. I have sometimes fancied it may
have hastened his end."

This ended the first skirmish. A certain gloom of manner and a pause was
considered due to the sacred memory of Sir Roderick.

"George," said my mother, "don't kick the chair!"

Then, perhaps, Mrs. Booch would produce a favourite piece from her
repertoire. "The evenings are drawing out nicely," she would say, or
if the season was decadent, "How the evenings draw in!" It was an
invaluable remark to her; I do not know how she would have got along
without it.

My mother, who sat with her back to the window, would always consider
it due to Mrs. Booch to turn about and regard the evening in the act of
elongation or contraction, whichever phase it might be.

A brisk discussion of how long we were to the longest or shortest day
would ensue, and die away at last exhausted.

Mrs. Mackridge, perhaps, would reopen. She had many intelligent habits;
among others she read the paper--The Morning Post. The other ladies
woul