“Then thank you, Seecombe, and good night.”
“Good night, madam.
Good night, sir.
Come, dogs.”
He snapped his fingers and they followed him reluctantly.
There was silence in the room for a few moments and then she said softly:
“Would you like some tea?
I understand it is a Cornish custom.”
My dignity vanished.
Holding to it had become too great a strain.
I went back to the fire and sat on the stool beside the table.
“I’ll tell you something,” I said.
“I have never seen this tray before, nor the kettle, nor the teapot.”
“I didn’t think you had,” she said.
“I saw the look in your eyes when Seecombe brought them into the room.
I don’t believe he has seen them before either.
They’re buried treasure.
He has dug for them in the cellars.”
“Is it really the thing to do,” I asked, “to drink tea after dinner?”
“Of course,” she said, “in high society, when ladies are present.”
“We never have it on Sundays,” I said, “when the Kendalls and the Pascoes come to dinner.”
“Perhaps Seecombe doesn’t consider them high society,” she said.
“I’m very flattered.
I like my tea.
You can eat the bread and butter.”
This too was an innovation.
Pieces of thin bread, rolled like small sausages.
“I’m surprised they knew how to do this in the kitchen,” I said, swallowing them down, “but they’re very good.”
“A sudden inspiration,” said cousin Rachel, “and no doubt you will have what is left for breakfast.
That butter is melting, you had better suck your fingers.”
She drank her tea, watching me over her cup.
“If you want to smoke your pipe, you can,” she said.
I stared at her surprised.
“In a lady’s boudoir?” I said.
“Are you sure?
Why, on Sundays, when Mrs. Pascoe comes with the vicar, we never smoke in the drawing room.”
“It’s not the drawing room, and I’m not Mrs. Pascoe,” she answered me.
I shrugged my shoulders and felt in my pocket for my pipe.
“Seecombe will think it very wrong,” I said.
“He’ll smell it in the morning.”
“I’ll open the window before I go to bed,” she said.
“It will all blow out, with the rain.”
“The rain will come in and spoil the carpet,” I said, “then that will be worse than the smell of the pipe.”
“It can be rubbed down with a cloth,” she said.
“How pernickety you are, like an old gentleman.”
“I thought women minded about such things.”
“They do, when they have nothing else to worry them,” she said.
It struck me suddenly as I smoked my pipe, sitting there in aunt Phoebe’s boudoir, that this was not at all the way I had intended to spend the evening.
I had planned a few words of icy courtesy and an abrupt farewell, leaving the interloper snubbed, dismissed.
I glanced up at her.