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The first clear proof of it which it still gives me a low sort of pleasure to recall was my prompt discovery, as we gathered around the tea-board, to eat the picnic's remains, that our Flora was out of humor with the Baron. It was plain that the whole day's flood of small experiences had been to her pretty vanity a Tantalus's cup.
The fire crackled, the kettle sang, Hester took her own place at once at the tea-board, and her husband threw himself on the sofa, after ascertaining that there were no family letters for him. He knew that it was impossible that there should be any in answer to the announcement of his marriage. Even Anne's could not arrive these four or five days yet.
She sat in a blaze of oppressive heat, in a cloud of moving dust, and her eyes could only wander from the walls, marked by her father's head, to the table cut and notched by her brothers, where stood the tea-board never thoroughly cleaned, the cups and saucers wiped in streaks, the milk a mixture of motes floating in thin blue, and the bread and butter growing every minute more greasy than even Rebecca's hands had first produced it.
"And have you really nothing to depend upon but that child's strawberries and Hugh's wood-saw?" he said in the tone he ought to have used from the beginning. "Little else." Charlton stifled two or three sentences that rose to his lips, and began to walk up and down the room again. His mother sat musing by the tea-board still, softly clinking her spoon against the edge of her tea-cup.
The solemn procession, headed by Baddeley, of tea-board, urn, and cake-bearers, made its appearance, and delivered her from a grievous imprisonment of body and mind. Mr. Crawford was obliged to move. She was at liberty, she was busy, she was protected. Edmund was not sorry to be admitted again among the number of those who might speak and hear.
Jenkins immediately set down the tea-board, and hurrying after Thaddeus along the passage, and through the coffee-room, darted before him, and opening the door into the lobby for him to go out, exclaimed, loud enough for everybody to hear, "Depend upon it, Count Sobieski, I will take care of your lordship's baggage."
Captain Cuttle then became sufficiently composed to relieve himself of the toast in his hat, and to take his place at the tea-board; but finding Walter's grasp upon his shoulder, on one side, and Florence whispering her tearful congratulations on the other, the Captain suddenly bolted again, and was missing for a good ten minutes.
Miss Egerton, who hardly thought two minutes on the same thing, sent away the tea-board, and, sitting down by him, exclaimed, "Mr. Constantine, I hold it right that no man should be thrown into a den of wild creatures without knowing what sort of animals he must meet there.
"Well sit down now," said he shaking his head, "and pour me out a cup of tea your mother can't make it right." And sipping his tea, for some time the old doctor sat listening to Mrs. Rossitur and eating bread and butter; saying little, but casting a very frequent glance at the figure opposite him behind the tea-board.
Then, as it grew dark, and as it was a solemn part of this Institution of the Picnic that she should perform all Bertha's household tasks, she trimmed the fire, and swept the hearth, and set the tea-board out, and drew the curtain, and lighted a candle.
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