The princess' weary face became interested, and when a few minutes later I returned, stepping carefully along the veranda, for I was harnessed to a tea-waggon, she indulged in a really hearty peal of laughter.
"But this is charming," she ejaculated, clapping her slender hands together. "Altogether charming!" and she took off her gloves.
Dallas had heaped the waggon high with every dainty he could find in the pantry, and the princess, who had evidently had little lunch, ate olives and honey and bread and chicken sandwiches and wound up with hot buttered toast from a plate that Bingi brought in.
He had heard us in the kitchen and had run down from the green cottage where he spent all his spare time with his pretty Japanese wife.
The princess poured the tea and she and Mrs. Duff drank theirs with lemon and sugar and no cream.
Dallas, with a hand shaking with excitement, gave his mother her cup and bending over the hammock murmured, "Funny little mother with her foreign ways."
She gave him a long deep glance. Ah! these two would never part again, and my pony heart was glad and not a bit jealous. I saw that a boy to be all-round and not lop-sided must have a mother and father too.
When I was released from the tea-table and was having my own cake and bread and butter and jam out by the seringas the whole family came sweeping down from the Widow Detover's.
"Oh! what a joy to see a tea-pot," exclaimed Mrs. Devering, sinking down on the veranda edge. "I am done out--such excitement."
"Bretta!" said Mrs. Duff, rising up in her hammock, "this is my friend, Madame de Valkonski."
"Pardon, Madame," said Mrs. Devering, stepping up on the veranda, "I did not see you. It gives me great pleasure to welcome you to our home. Jim, here is the princess," she said over her shoulder.
Mr. Devering took off his cap and held it in his hand, and Madame de Valkonski, slipping from the tea-table, went to sit down in a low chair that Mr. Devering placed beside the hammock.
I was amused at the thirsty Mrs. Devering, who was having the nice big black teapot drawn from her clinging hand.
"Nephew!" she said reproachfully to Dallas.
"My Aunt!" he exclaimed in his old-fashioned way. "Tannic acid has formed by this time. I would not injure you. I am going to make fresh tea."