"I've never tasted tea before. How do you think we can boil a kettle?"
"What a strange—what a wonderful world it must be!" cried Adeline. And Mrs. Bunting said: "I can hardly imagine it without tea. It's worse than— I mean it reminds me—of abroad."
Mrs. Bunting was in the act of refilling the Sea Lady's cup. "I suppose," she said suddenly, "as you're not used to it— It won't affect your diges—" She glanced at Adeline and hesitated. "But it's China tea."
And she filled the cup.
"It's an inconceivable world to me," said Adeline. "Quite."
Her dark eyes rested thoughtfully on the Sea Lady for a space. "Inconceivable," she repeated, for, in that unaccountable way in which a whisper will attract attention that a turmoil fails to arouse, the tea had opened her eyes far more than the tail.
The Sea Lady looked at her with sudden frankness. "And think how wonderful all this must seem to me!" she remarked.
But Adeline's imagination was aroused for the moment and she was not to be put aside by the Sea Lady's terrestrial impressions. She pierced—for a moment or so—the ladylike serenity, the assumption of a terrestrial fashion of mind that was imposing so successfully upon Mrs. Bunting. "It must be," she said, "the strangest world." And she stopped invitingly. . . .
She could not go beyond that and the Sea Lady would not help her.
347
