“And have you grown so fickle that you don’t like your own taste, Pa dear?”

“Well, my love,” he returned, swallowing a bit of the cottage loaf with considerable effort, for it seemed to stick by the way: “I should have thought it was hardly sufficiently splendid for existing circumstances.”

“And so, Pa,” said Bella, moving coaxingly to his side instead of remaining opposite, “you sometimes have a quiet tea here all alone? I am not in the tea’s way, if I draw my arm over your shoulder like this, Pa?”

“Yes, my dear, and no, my dear. Yes to the first question, and Certainly Not to the second. Respecting the quiet tea, my dear, why you see the occupations of the day are sometimes a little wearing; and if there’s nothing interposed between the day and your mother, why she is sometimes a little wearing, too.”

“I know, Pa.”