smile she gazed round and
about, at the warm, cracked, smooth red tiles of the floor; at the
painted green walls, at a Windsor chair near the cupboard--a solitary
chair that had evidently been misunderstood by the large family of
relatives in the other room and sent into exile; at the pair of bellows
that hung on the wall above the chair, and the rich gaudiness of the
grocer's almanac above the bellows; at the tea-table, with its coarse
grey cloth and thick crockery spread beneath the window.

"So you have all your meals here?" she ventured.

"Ay," he said. "I have what I call my meals here."

"Why," she cried, "don't you enjoy them?"

"I eat 'em," he said.

"What time do you have tea?" she inquired.

"Four o'clock," said he. "Sharp!"

"But it's a quarter to, now!" she exclaimed, pointing to a clock with
weights at the end of brass chains and a long pendulum. "And didn't you
say your servant was out?"

"Ay," he mysteriously lied. "Her's out. But her'll come back. Happen
her's gone to get a bit o' fish or something."

"Fish! Do you always have fish for tea?"

"I have what I'm given," he replied. "I fancy a snack for my tea.
Something tasty, ye know."

"Why," she said, "you're just like me. I adore tea. I'd sooner have tea
than any other meal of the day. But I never yet knew a servant who
could get something tasty every day. Of course, it's quite easy if you
know how to do it; but servants don't--that is to say, as a rule--but I
expect you've got a very good one."

"So-so!" James murmured.

"The trouble with servants is that they always think that if you like a
thing one day you'll like the same thing every day for the next three
years."

"Ay," he said, drily. "I used to like a kidney, but it's more than three
years ago." He stuck his lips out, and raised himself higher than ever
on his toes.

He did not laugh. But she laughed, almost boisterously.

"I can't help telling you," she said, "you're perfectly lovely,
great-stepuncle. Are we both going to drink out of the same cup?" In
such manner did the current of her talk gyrate and turn corners.

He approached the cupboard.

"No, no!" She sprang up. "Let me. I'll do that, as the servant is so
long."

And she opened the cupboard. Among a miscellany of crocks therein was a
blue-and-white cup and saucer, and a plate to match underneath it, that
seemed out of place there. She lifted down the pile.

"Steady on!" he counselled her. "Why dun you choose t