stepped past into
the warmth.

The man she called Isaac was huddled and nodding in a chair, before
the bluish blaze of a wreck-wood fire. He met me with an incurious
stare, and began to doze again. He was clearly in the last decline
of manhood, the stage of utter childishness and mere oblivion; and
sat there with his faculties collapsed, waiting for release.

My mired boots played havoc with the neatly sanded floor; but the old
woman dusted a chair for me as carefully as if I had worn robes of
state, and set it on the other side of the hearth. Then she put the
kettle to boil, and unhitching a cup from the dresser, took a key
from it, and opened a small cupboard between the fireplace and the
wall. That which she sought stood on the top shelf and she had to
climb on a chair to reach it. I offered my help: but no--she would
get it herself. It proved to be a small green canister.

The tea that came from this canister I wish I could describe.
No sooner did the boiling water touch it than the room was filled
with fragrance. The dotard in the chair drew a long breath through
his nostrils, as though the aroma touched some quick centre in his
moribund brain. The woman poured out a cup, and I sipped it.

"Smuggled," I thought to myself; for indeed you cannot get such tea
in London if you pay fifty shillings a pound.

"You like it?" she asked. Before I could answer, a small table stood
at my elbow, and she was loading it with delicacies from the
cupboard. The contents of that cupboard! Caviare came from it, and
a small ambrosial cheese; dried figs and guava jelly; olives,
cherries in brandy, wonderful filberts glazed with sugar; biscuits
and all manner of queer Russian sweets. I leant back with wide eyes.

"Feodor sends us these," said the old woman, bringing a dish of
Cornish cream and a home-made loaf to give the feast a basis.

"Who's Feodor?"

"Feodor Himkoff." She paused a moment, and added, "He's mate on a
Russian vessel."

"A friend?"

The question went unnoticed. "Is there any you fancy?" she asked.
"Some o't may be outlandish eatin'."

"Do _you_ like these things?" I looked from her to the caviare.

"I don't know. I never tried. We keeps 'em, my man an' I, for all
poor come-by-chance folks that knocks."

"But these are dainties for rich men's tables."

"May be. I've never tasted--they'd stick in our ozels if we tried."

I wanted to ask a dozen questions, but thought it politer to accept