solemn afternoon hour, were sitting behind dainty
porcelain and silver fittings, with their voices tinkling pleasantly in a
cascade of solicitous little questions. Cushat-Prinkly detested the
whole system of afternoon tea. According to his theory of life a woman
should lie on a divan or couch, talking with incomparable charm or
looking unutterable thoughts, or merely silent as a thing to be looked
on, and from behind a silken curtain a small Nubian page should silently
bring in a tray with cups and dainties, to be accepted silently, as a
matter of course, without drawn-out chatter about cream and sugar and hot
water. If one's soul was really enslaved at one's mistress's feet how
could one talk coherently about weakened tea? Cushat-Prinkly had never
expounded his views on the subject to his mother; all her life she had
been accustomed to tinkle pleasantly at tea-time behind dainty porcelain
and silver, and if he had spoken to her about divans and Nubian pages she
would have urged him to take a week's holiday at the seaside. Now, as he
passed through a tangle of small streets that led indirectly to the
elegant Mayfair terrace for which he was bound, a horror at the idea of
confronting Joan Sebastable at her tea-table seized on him. A momentary
deliverance presented itself; on one floor of a narrow little house at
the noisier end of Esquimault Street lived Rhoda Ellam, a sort of remote
cousin, who made a living by creating hats out of costly materials. The
hats really looked as if they had come from Paris; the cheques she got
for them unfortunately never looked as if they were going to Paris.
However, Rhoda appeared to find life amusing and to have a fairly good
time in spite of her straitened circumstances. Cushat-Prinkly decided to
climb up to her floor and defer by half-an-hour or so the important
business which lay before him; by spinning out his visit he could
contrive to reach the Sebastable mansion after the last vestiges of
dainty porcelain had been cleared away.

Rhoda welcomed him into a room that seemed to do duty as workshop,
sitting-room, and kitchen combined, and to be wonderfully clean and
comfortable at the same time.

"I'm having a picnic meal," she announced. "There's caviare in that jar
at your elbow. Begin on that brown bread-and-butter while I cut some
more. Find yourself a cup; the teapot is behind you. Now tell me about
hundreds of things."

She made no other allusion to food, but talke