was a large blonde. Then there was Miss Fison, the maid who served both
Lady Drew and Miss Somerville, and at the end of the table opposite my
mother, sat Rabbits the butler. Rabbits, for a butler, was an unassuming
man, and at tea he was not as you know butlers, but in a morning
coat and a black tie with blue spots. Still, he was large, with side
whiskers, even if his clean-shaven mouth was weak and little. I sat
among these people on a high, hard, early Gregorian chair, trying to
exist, like a feeble seedling amidst great rocks, and my mother sat
with an eye upon me, resolute to suppress the slightest manifestation
of vitality. It was hard on me, but perhaps it was also hard upon
these rather over-fed, ageing, pretending people, that my youthful
restlessness and rebellious unbelieving eyes should be thrust in among
their dignities.

Tea lasted for nearly three-quarters of an hour, and I sat it out
perforce; and day after day the talk was exactly the same.

"Sugar, Mrs. Mackridge?" my mother used to ask.

"Sugar, Mrs. Latude-Fernay?"

The word sugar would stir the mind of Mrs. Mackridge. "They say," she
would begin, issuing her proclamation--at least half her sentences began
"they say"--"sugar is fatt-an-ing, nowadays. Many of the best people do
not take it at all."

"Not with their tea, ma'am," said Rabbits intelligently.

"Not with anything," said Mrs. Mackridge, with an air of crushing
repartee, and drank.