Downstairs, the table was laid with a “visitor’s tea.” There were the best tea things with a fat pink rose on the side of each cup; hearts of lettuce, thin bread and butter, and the crisp little cakes that had been baked in readiness that morning. Edmund and Laura sat very upright on their hard windsor chairs. Bread and butter first. Always bread and butter first: they had been told that so many times that it had the finality of a text of Scripture. But Mr. Herring, who was the eldest present and ought to have set a good example, began with the little cakes, picking up and examining each one closely before disposing of it in two bites. However, while there were still a few left, Mrs. Herring placed bread and butter on his plate and handed him the lettuce meaningly; and when he twisted the tender young hearts of lettuce into tight rolls and dipped them into the salt cellar she took the spoon and put salt on the side of his plate.

Mrs. Herring ate very genteelly, crumbling her cake on her plate and picking out and putting aside the currants, because, she explained, they did not agree with her. She crooked the little finger of the hand which held her teacup and sipped its contents like a bird, with her eyes turned up to the ceiling.

While they sat there, the door wide open, with the scent of flowers and the humming of bees and the waving of fruit-tree tops, seeming to the children to say that the stiff, formal tea-drinking would soon be over and that they were all waiting for them in the garden, a woman paused at the gate, looked the spring cart well over, set down her water-buckets and opened the gate. “Why, it’s Rachel. Whatever can she want?” said the children’s mother, rather vexed at the intrusion. What Rachel wanted was to know who the visitors were and why they had come.

“Why, if it ain’t Mrs. Herring—and Mr. Herring, too!” she cried in a tone of joyful recognition as she reached the door. “An’ you’ve come to clear out that old closet of yours, I’ll be bound. I thought to meself when I saw the spring cart at th’ gate, ‘That’s Mrs. Herring come to fetch away her old lumber at last.’ But I weren’t quite sure, because you’ve got that waterproof cover over it all. How be ye both, and how do ye like it up yonder?”

During this speech Mrs. Herring had frozen visibly. “We are well, thank you,” she said, “and we like our present residence very much, though what business it is of yours to inquire, I don’t know.”

“Oh, no offence intended, no offence,” said Rachel, somewhat abashed. “I only come to inquire, just friendly like,” and off she stumped down the path, throwing another inquisitive glance at the cart as she passed it.