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After exerting his influence to the utmost, Allan was obliged to remain contented with a compromise. Midwinter promised, not very willingly, to join the party toward evening, at the place appointed for a gypsy tea-making, which was to close the proceedings of the day. To this extent he would consent to take the opportunity of placing himself on a friendly footing with the Milroys.
She made an abrupt end of her tea-making, and went off to her little business-room with a grim smile upon her iron-grey countenance. She too had been taken in a little by Jack's pleasant farce of the Sinner Repentant; and it occurred to her to feel a little ashamed of herself as she went up-stairs.
Here there was another row of shows: the Fat Boy, whose huge clothes were being paraded outside as an earnest of what was to be seen within; the Lady Without Arms, whose wonderful feats of knitting, sewing, writing, and tea-making were being rehearsed to the crowd; the Entertaining Theatre, outside which was a stuffed performing cat playing on a drum, and two tiny children, of about three years old, dressed up in the most extraordinary costumes, and dancing, with tambourines in their hands; the Picture Gallery, in which you could see Adam and Eve, Queen Elizabeth, and other distinguished persons: all these were on Rosalie's right hand, and on her left was a long succession of stalls, on which were sold gingerbread, brandysnap, nuts, biscuits, cocoa-nuts, boiled peas, hot potatoes, and sweets of all kinds.
Ensued a silence during which he chipped at his egg-shell in an absent-minded fashion. "That fellow Kennaston said anything to you yet?" he presently queried. "I I don't understand," she protested oh, perfectly unconvincingly. The tea-making, too, engrossed her at this point to an utterly improbable extent.
But madame shook her head, giggling, and I do not suppose ever heard of such an infusion in her life. Meantime, tea-making on that breezy eminence was no easy matter. The little flames of my spirit-lamp were blown hither and thither anywhere but in the right direction.
She had a clean damask napkin pinned before her to guard her dress during the process of tea-making; her favourite geraniums in the bow-window were looking as healthy as she could desire; her own handsome portrait, painted when she was twenty years younger, was smiling down on her with agreeable flattery; and altogether she seemed to be in as peaceful and pleasant a position as a buxom, well-drest elderly lady need desire.
She stepped to the entrance hall, laid aside her hat and jacket, and returned to set about tea-making with deftness and quickness. She found a wilted slice of butter in a safe, and set out cups and sugar beside it. Miss Toland stopped eating, and watched these preparations with great satisfaction.
In a French salon all is to the last degree informal. The bouilloire, the French tea-kettle, is often tended by one of the gentlemen, who aids his fair neighbors in the mysteries of tea-making. One nymph is always to be found at the table dispensing tea and talk; and a basket of simple biscuit and cakes, offered by another, is all the further repast.
Then he struck and applied a match, saw the flame leap and roar amongst the combustibles, filled the stoker's squat tea-kettle with water from the green barrel, put in a generous handful of Tarawakee tea, and, innocent of refinements in tea-making, set it on to boil. "George is more spitefuller nor wot Alfred is," Billy Beesley murmured, as the kettle sent forth its first faint shrill note.
And, a few minutes afterwards, the show of the blue horse and the performing seal set out on its way to the next feast, accompanied by the shows of the fat boy and of the lady without arms, who performed wonders with her toes in the ways of tea-making and other household business, and whose very infirmities and deformities were thus made into gain, and exposed to the gaze of curious crowds by her own relations.
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