The tea-tray was placed upon a round table at Miss Gault’s side. A black kitchen-kettle⁠—Miss Gault declared that no other kind boiled good water⁠—was placed upon the hearth. The servant herself did not retire, as most servants are wont to do at such a juncture, but remained to assist at the ceremony of “pouring out,” a ceremony which was so deftly accomplished that Wolf soon found all his difficulties and annoyances melting away in the fragrance of the most perfect cup of tea he had ever tasted.

The general effect of Miss Gault’s drawing-room, in the pleasant mingling of twilight and firelight, began to take on for his imagination the particular atmosphere that he was wont, in his own mind, to think of as “the Penn House atmosphere.” This implied that there was something about this room which made him recall that old bow-window in Brunswick Terrace, Weymouth, where in his childhood he used to indulge in those queer, secretive pleasures. There was not a single piece of furniture in this room of Miss Gault’s which did not project some essence of the past, tender and mellow as the smell of potpourri.