Nor did Ermengarde lightly dismiss from memory her own joy and fatigue in making that tea with her own hands, and for the first time, over a complicated and expensive new patent spirit-lamp, expressly devised to boil a minimum of water with a maximum of peril, inconvenience, and delay. A serious initial difficulty in lighting the lamp was presently overcome by the discovery that there was no spirit in it. A little of this, after some deliberation and delay, was borrowed of Miss Boundrish's mother. "But on no account tell Dorris," the latter implored; "she don't like lending things." The second difficulty of the kettle not boiling was surmounted after finding that it had no water--a circumstance which nearly resulted in burning a hole in it--by ringing the bell not more than five times for water of unimpeachable purity. The kettle at last having been filled, boiled over during a long and futile search for the tea, several parcels of which had been artfully mislaid in improbable portions of wearing apparel with the guileful purpose of evading douaniers and defrauding the French Republic of revenue. At last the brilliant idea of following up the trail of those packets, that had burst and peppered priceless raiment with black dust and broken stalks, resulted in their discovery. No matter how widely friends at home had differed in their advice to those about to travel, all had agreed that as much tea as the regulations by utmost stretching permitted, besides as much again as that, must be carried in every separate parcel and trunk, with the result that Ermengarde, finding little use during her travels for the tea upon which she had squandered so much substance, and incidentally making all her things smell like a grocer's shop, furtively shed small packets of it all across the Continent on her return home, in vague terror of incurring mysterious pains and penalties by secreting so much contraband. "Is it refreshing?" she asked, when at last, flushed with triumph and heat, and smudged with lamp-black, besides having burnt her hand in a spirit-flare, she handed the precious beverage in an enamelled tin mug without a saucer. She would not have had a saucer for the world; it would have spoilt the whole thing. "It's--very--hot," gasped the recipient, with watering eyes and a look of deep anguish. "It's a very special tea," Ermengarde said impressively, watching the sufferer's agonies with complacence. "Very special," sighed the victim; "most special." "I got it myself, from a woman whose cousin married a tea-planter. He sends her a chest every now and then to sell to intimate friends to pay for Church work," Ermengarde continued, with intense satisfaction. "That accounts for the remarkable flavour."