Without her hat she looked as if she lived there, a jewel in a pipe-case.  She appeared to be just as much at home as he was.  And they were so at home together that there was no further necessity to strain after a continuous conversation.  With a vague smile she gazed round and about, at the warm, cracked, smooth red tiles of the floor; at the painted green walls, at a Windsor chair near the cupboard—­a solitary chair that had evidently been misunderstood by the large family of relatives in the other room and sent into exile; at the pair of bellows that hung on the wall above the chair, and the rich gaudiness of the grocer’s almanac above the bellows; at the tea-table, with its coarse grey cloth and thick crockery spread beneath the window.

“So you have all your meals here?” she ventured.

“Ay,” he said.  “I have what I call my meals here.”

“Why,” she cried, “don’t you enjoy them?”

“I eat ’em,” he said.

“What time do you have tea?” she inquired.

“Four o’clock,” said he.  “Sharp!”

“But it’s a quarter to, now!” she exclaimed, pointing to a clock with weights at the end of brass chains and a long pendulum.  “And didn’t you say your servant was out?”

“Ay,” he mysteriously lied.  “Her’s out.  But her’ll come back.  Happen her’s gone to get a bit o’ fish or something.”

“Fish!  Do you always have fish for tea?”

“I have what I’m given,” he replied.  “I fancy a snack for my tea.  Something tasty, ye know.”

“Why,” she said, “you’re just like me.  I adore tea.  I’d sooner have tea than any other meal of the day.  But I never yet knew a servant who could get something tasty every day.  Of course, it’s quite easy if you know how to do it; but servants don’t—­that is to say, as a rule—­but I expect you’ve got a very good one.”

“So-so!” James murmured.

“The trouble with servants is that they always think that if you like a thing one day you’ll like the same thing every day for the next three years.”

“Ay,” he said, drily.  “I used to like a kidney, but it’s more than three years ago.”  He stuck his lips out, and raised himself higher than ever on his toes.

He did not laugh.  But she laughed, almost boisterously.

“I can’t help telling you,” she said, “you’re perfectly lovely, great-stepuncle.  Are we both going to drink out of the same cup?” In such manner did the current of her talk gyrate and turn corners.

He approached the cupboard.

“No, no!” She sprang up.  “Let me.  I’ll do that, as the servant is so long.”

And she opened the cupboard.  Among a miscellany of crocks therein was a blue-and-white cup and saucer, and a plate to match underneath it, that seemed out of place there.  She lifted down the pile.

“Steady on!” he counselled her.  “Why dun you choose that?”

“Because I like it,” she replied, simply.