The portrait of a lady

 

 

 

 

Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.
There are circumstances in which, weather you partake of the tea or not- some people of course never do- the situation is in itself delightful. Those that I have in begining to unfold this simple history offered an admirable setting to un innocent pastime. The implements of the little feast head been disposed upon the lawn of an old English countryhouse, in what I should call the perfect middle of a splendid summer afternoon. Part of the afternoon waned, but much of it was left, and what was left of the finest and rarest quality. Real dusk would not arrive for many hours ; but the flood of summer light had begun to ebb. the air head grown mellow, the shadows were long upon the smooth, dense turf. They lengthened slowly, however, and the scene expressed that sense of leisure still to come which is perhaps the cheif source of one's enjoyment of such a scene at such an hour.

 

 

 

 

From five o'clock to eight is on certain occasion as this the interval could be only an eternity of pleasure. The persons concerned in it were taking their pleasure quietly, and they were not of the sex which is supposed to furnish the regular votaries of the ceremony I have mentioned. The shadows on the perfect lawn were straight and angular; they were the shadow of an old man sitting in a deep wicker-chair near the low table on which the tea had been served, and of two younger men strolling to and fro, in desultory talk, in front of him. The old man had his cup in his hand; it was an unusually large cup, of a brillant pattern from the rest of the set, and painted in brillant colours.

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