"I doubt there’s no tea for you just this minute, Sarah," Eliza said, affecting great concern as she lifted the tea-pot lid. "Sally, my lass, you’d best see about mashing another pot. There’ll be a deal o’ folk sending up for more in a brace o’ shakes, and we can’t have them saying they’re not as well-tret at Blindbeck as they’re used. Not as anybody’s ever said it yet as I’ve heard tell, though you never know what folks’ll do for spite. Most on ’em get through their three cups afore they’re done, and me like as not just barely through my first. Eh, but I used to be terble bothered, just at the start, keeping folks filled and their mugs as they rightly should! You bairns wasn’t up then, of course, but we’d farm-lads in the house, and wi’ a rare twist to ’em an’ all! Yon’s a thing you’ve never been bothered with, Sarah, wi’ such a small spot and lile or nowt in the way o’ work. You’d nobbut a couple o’ hands at any time, had you, and not them when you’d Geordie-an’-Jim? You’ve a deal to be thankful for, I’m sure, you have that! You’ve always been able to set down comfortable to your meat, instead o’ fretting yourself to skin and bone seeing as other folk had their wants." Here Mrs. Addison offered to pass her cup, and then thought better of it, remembering the new brew. Eliza, however, urged it forward. Apparently she had discovered concealed virtue under the tea-pot lid. "Nay, now, Mrs. Addison, there’s a sup in the pot yet! You’ve no call to look shy about it,--I wasn’t talking at you! ... Pass Mrs. Addison the cream, Mary Phyllis, and waken up and look sharp about it! Blindbeck tea’s none the worse, I reckon, for a drop o’ Blindbeck cream...." She returned the cup, smiling benignly, and then pretended to have lost Sarah and suddenly found her again. "Losh, Mrs. Simon, you’re that whyet I’d clean forgot you were there! You’ll not want to be waiting on Sally and the fresh brew. I’ll wet leaves again for you just to be going on with!" So Sarah got the bottom of the pot after a little more talk, a hunt for a clean cup and an address on the value of the spoons. Half a cup--consisting chiefly of tea-leaves--was passed to Simon, but was intercepted on its way by Will. Simon did not notice the manoeuvre, being busy glowering at a niece’s shoulder turned sulkily on him from the left; but Eliza saw it from her end of the table and turned an angry red. She never forgot Simon’s indifference to her as a girl, and would have made him pay for the insult if she could. She could not always reach him, however, because of the family tie which nothing seemed able to break. But Sarah, at least, it was always consoling to think, could be made to pay. There were times when all her reserve could not hide from a gleeful Eliza that she paid....