ll, mostly gathered
about a round table near the fire. He discerned Mrs Ffolliot in the
very act of "dispensing tea" and General Grantly standing on the
hearthrug warming his coat tails. Mary, too, he saw give a cup of tea
into her grandfather's hands, and he was conscious of the presence of
Mrs Grantly seated on an oaken settle at the other side of the fire
from Mrs Ffolliot. These four were clear to him as he came into the
hall. There was a fire of logs in the open fireplace and a good many
lights, and Eloquent, coming out of the soft darkness of that winter
afternoon, felt dazzled and intolerably hot.

The four people he saw first suddenly seemed to recede to an
immeasurable distance, and he became conscious of others whom he could
not focus. His tongue clave to the roof of his mouth, and he was
conscious that at his entrance dead silence had fallen upon the group
by the fire. Then Mrs Ffolliot rose and held out a kind fair hand to
him, and said something that he could not hear. Somehow he reached the
succouring hand and clung to it like a drowning man, mumbling the
while, "Sorry to intrude upon you, but one of your sons"--again the
name eluded him--"has broken his arm, and he's in my aunt's cottage."

"Look at Ganpie's tea!" exclaimed a shrill clear voice, and the Kitten
diverted attention from Eloquent to the General, who was calmly pouring
the tea from his newly filled cup upon the bear-skin hearthrug, as he
gazed fixedly at this bringer of ill-tidings.

Eloquent could never remember clearly what happened between the dual
announcement of the accident and the spilling of the General's tea,
till the moment when he found himself sitting on the settle beside Mrs
Grantly with a cup of tea of his own, which Mary had poured out.
Everyone else seemed to have melted away, Mrs Ffolliot to telephone to
the doctor, the General to order his motor, the Kitten and Ger to the
nursery, and the rest of the party to the four winds.

But he, Mrs Grantly, and Mary were still sitting at the fire, and Mary
had asked him if he took sugar.

"Two lumps," he said.

"So do I," said Mary, and it seemed a most wonderful coincidence of
kindred tastes.

In thinking it over afterwards it struck him that the whole family took
the accident very coolly. There was no fuss, very little exclamation;
and to Eloquent, sitting as a guest in that old hall where, as a small
boy, he had sometimes peeped wonderingly, there came a curious feeli