And there he was in the middle room, the kitchen, listening to her movements behind the door.  He heard the running of water, and then the mild explosion of lighting the second ring of the gas-stove; the first had been lighted by Mrs. Butt.  Then he heard nothing whatever for years, and when he looked at the clock it was fourteen minutes past four.  In the act of looking at the clock, his eye had to traverse the region of the sofa.  On the sofa were one parasol and two gloves.  Astonishing, singular, disconcerting, how those articles—­which, after all, bore no kind of resemblance to any style of furniture or hangings—­seemed, nevertheless, to refurnish the room, to give the room an air of being thickly inhabited which it never had before!

Then she burst into the kitchen unexpectedly, with a swish of silk that was like the retreat of waves down the shingle of some Atlantic shore.

“My dear uncle,” she protested, “please do make yourself scarce.  You are in my way, and I’m very busy.”

She went to the cupboard and snatched at some plates, two of which she dropped on the table, and three of which she took into the kitchen.

“Have ye got all as ye want?” he questioned her politely, anxious to be of assistance.

“Everything!” she answered, positively, and with just the least hint of an intention to crush him.

“Have ye indeed!”

He did not utter this exclamation aloud; but with it he applied balm to his secret breast.  For he still remembered, being an old man, her crushing him in the park, and the peril of another crushing roused the male in him.  And it was with a sardonic and cruel satisfaction that he applied such balm to his secret breast.  The truth was, he knew that she had not got all she wanted.  He knew that, despite her extraordinary capableness (of which she was rather vain), despite her ability to calculate mentally the interest on eighty-nine pounds for six months at four-and-a-half per cent., she could not possibly prepare the tea without coming to him and confessing to him that she had been mistaken, and that she had not got everything she wanted.  She would be compelled to humble herself before him—­were it ever so little.  He was a hard old man, and the prospect of this humbling gave him pleasure (I regret to say).

You cannot have tea without tea-leaves; and James Ollerenshaw kept the tea-leaves in a tea-caddy, locked, in his front room.  He had an extravagant taste in tea.  He fancied China tea; and he fancied China tea that cost five shillings a pound.  He was the last person to leave China tea at five shillings a pound to the economic prudence of a Mrs. Butt.  Every day Mrs. Butt brought to him the teapot (warmed) and a teaspoon, and he unlocked the tea-caddy, dispensed the right quantity of tea, and relocked the tea-caddy.