it he applied balm to
his secret breast. For he still remembered, being an old man, her
crushing him in the park, and the peril of another crushing roused the
male in him. And it was with a sardonic and cruel satisfaction that he
applied such balm to his secret breast. The truth was, he knew that she
had not got all she wanted. He knew that, despite her extraordinary
capableness (of which she was rather vain), despite her ability to
calculate mentally the interest on eighty-nine pounds for six months at
four-and-a-half per cent., she could not possibly prepare the tea
without coming to him and confessing to him that she had been mistaken,
and that she had _not_ got everything she wanted. She would be compelled
to humble herself before him--were it ever so little. He was a hard old
man, and the prospect of this humbling gave him pleasure (I regret to
say).

You cannot have tea without tea-leaves; and James Ollerenshaw kept the
tea-leaves in a tea-caddy, locked, in his front room. He had an
extravagant taste in tea. He fancied China tea; and he fancied China tea
that cost five shillings a pound. He was the last person to leave China
tea at five shillings a pound to the economic prudence of a Mrs. Butt.
Every day Mrs. Butt brought to him the teapot (warmed) and a teaspoon,
and he unlocked the tea-caddy, dispensed the right quantity of tea, and
relocked the tea-caddy.

There was no other tea in the house. So with a merry heart the callous
fellow (shamefully delighting in the imminent downfall of a
fellow-creature--and that a woman!) went into the front room as he had
been bidden. On one of the family of chairs, in a corner, was a black
octagonal case. He opened this case, which was not locked, and drew from
it a concertina, all inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Then he went to the
desk, and from under a pile of rent books he extracted several pieces
of music, and selected one. This selected piece he reared up on the
mantelpiece against two brass candlesticks. It was obvious, from the
certainty and ease of his movements, that he had the habit of lodging
pieces of music against those two brass candlesticks. The music bore the
illustrious name of George Frederick Handel.

Then he put on a pair of spectacles which were lying on the mantelpiece,
and balanced them on the end of his nose. Finally he adjusted his little
hands to the straps of the concertina. You might imagine that he would
instantly dissolve into melody. Not at all.