Oh, that tray! It really seemed as though the things thereon must come to blows, so fiercely did they contradict each other. The coffee pot of make and material precisely like those good “Bridgets” purchase for the use of honest “Patricks.” The knives and forks--they appeared a bit later--were of that brand which always makes you wish that you were dead, they make of life a thing so hideous. While cheek by jowl with these rough things stood a few pieces of old porcelain, deserving, each one of them, a satin-lined box to rest in. And to keep them in countenance, there were four spoons of silver, paper-thin, initials and dates quite worn away, and all a trifle bent and dented in spite of the owner’s care of them; while the linen, I could have cried over that eye-destroying mass of delicate darning. Truly, there were places in my napkin where the darning had itself been darned again. But the coffee, like the fire, which had been increased by the addition of one small cube of coal, was inadequate in quantity, but the quality? oh, well, it was perfection, that’s all; absolute perfection. I tasted it and smiled, and sighed. She understood, and snapped her old eyes at me approvingly, and _she_ tasted and sighed, and then she slowly said: “Whenever I drink good coffee I always rejoice that God created it. It would have been an infernal shame had it been invented by some fool man!” I laughed aloud--I always did, I’m sorry to confess--whenever she swore, she did it in such an impersonal way, never, never in anger, never, even when she was busily engaged in flaying alive some victim of her memory and her tongue. She generally swore to herself, and nearly always when in a reflective mood. When I laughed, she gave me a glance and asked quickly: “What is it, eh? Did I swear? Well, don’t you do it, that’s all. But Lord! you won’t have to live fifteen or twenty years alone with a ‘cussing’ parrot, as I did. For some time after Sally died I used to say ‘damnation.’ Oh, I don’t say it now; don’t open your eyes any wider, you’ll meet with an accident. But, you see, for nearly twenty years that bird told me twice a day that her coffee was ‘too damnation hot,’ and after she was gone I had to say it now and then to break the silence.” As she talked she fidgeted uneasily with her spoon and cup; at last she broke out with: “My dear, I asked you just to have coffee with me, but now--well, to tell you the truth--I am quite faint. I breakfast at half-past six, that I may have the strong morning light for my work, and somehow I feel a bit exhausted to-day, and--and I’d like my dinner now, if you can pardon an old woman’s offence against all conventionalities, and stay and dine with me!”