The tea, or the supper, or whatever else they called the evening meal,
was over when they reached the Major's; but the cloth, ornamented with
a few additional smears and stains, was still upon the table. At one end
of the board Mrs Jefferson Brick and two other ladies were drinking
tea; out of the ordinary course, evidently, for they were bonneted
and shawled, and seemed to have just come home. By the light of three
flaring candles of different lengths, in as many candlesticks of
different patterns, the room showed to almost as little advantage as in
broad day.
These ladies were all three talking together in a very loud tone when
Martin and his friend entered; but seeing those gentlemen, they stopped
directly, and became excessively genteel, not to say frosty. As they
went on to exchange some few remarks in whispers, the very water in the
teapot might have fallen twenty degrees in temperature beneath their
chilling coldness.
'Have you been to meeting, Mrs Brick?' asked Martin's friend, with
something of a roguish twinkle in his eye.
'To lecture, sir.'
'I beg your pardon.
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