V

matter of comfort. I even suggested two little mirrors, like those which were so comforting to us all when we sat in hansom cabs. That struck Burden as being the height of ingenuity⁠—and I know it proved to Miss Averies, most finally, that I am dangerous, since no woman ever looks in those little mirrors without some small motive of coquetry. It was just after that that she said to me:

“Don’t you think that the little measures on the tops of the new canisters are extravagant for China tea?”

That, of course, admitted me to the peculiar intimacy that women allow to other women, or to poets, or to dangerous men. Edward, I know, dislikes the drinking of China tea because it is against the principle of supporting the British flag. But Miss Averies in her unequal battle with this youth of the classical features slightly vulgarized, called me in to show a sign of sympathy⁠—to give at least the flicker of the other side⁠—of the woman, the poet, or the pessimist among men. She asked me, in fact, not to take up the cudgels to the extent of saying that China tea is the thing to drink⁠—that would have been treason to Edward⁠—but she desired that her instinct should be acknowledged to the extent of saying that the measures of canisters should be contrived to suit the one kind of tea as well as the other. In his blind sort of way Edward caught the challenge in the remark and his straight brows lowered a very little.

“If you don’t have more than three pounds of China tea in the house in a year it won’t matter about the measures,” he said. “We never use more at Shackleton.”

“But it makes the tea too strong, Edward.”

“Then you need not fill the measure,” he answered.

“Oh, I wish,” she said to me, “that you’d tell Edward not to make me make tea at all. I dread it. The servants do it so much better.”