how it was carried into that temple of moist cleanliness, the dairy,
where it quietly separated itself from the meaner elements of milk, and
lay in mellowed whiteness, ready for the skimming-dish which transferred
it to Miss Gibbs's glass cream-jug. If I am right in my conjecture, you
are unacquainted with the highest possibilities of tea; and Mr. Pilgrim,
who is holding that cup in his hands, has an idea beyond you.

Mrs. Hackit declines cream; she has so long abstained from it with an eye
to the weekly butter-money, that abstinence, wedded to habit, has
begotten aversion. She is a thin woman with a chronic liver-complaint,
which would have secured her Mr. Pilgrim's entire regard and unreserved
good word, even if he had not been in awe of her tongue, which was as
sharp as his own lancet. She has brought her knitting--no frivolous fancy
knitting, but a substantial woollen stocking; the click-click of her
knitting-needles is the running accompaniment to all her conversation,
and in her utmost enjoyment of spoiling a friend's self-satisfaction, she
was never known to spoil a stocking. Mrs. Patten does not admire this
excessive click-clicking activity. Quiescence in an easy-chair, under the
sense of compound interest perpetually accumulating, has long seemed an
ample function to her, and she does her malevolence gently. She is a
pretty little old woman of eighty, with a close cap and tiny flat white
curls round her face, as natty and unsoiled and invariable as the waxen
image of a little old lady under a glass-case; once a lady's-maid, and
married for her beauty. She used to adore her husband, and now she adores
her money, cherishing a quiet blood-relation's hatred for her niece,
Janet Gibbs, who, she knows, expects a large legacy, and whom she is
determined to disappoint. Her money shall all go in a lump to a distant
relation of her husband's, and Janet shall be saved the trouble of
pretending to cry, by finding that she is left with a miserable pittance.