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I remember making a woeful slip when I was taken over a cotton mill. The man who was conducting us pointed to what looked like a heap of dirty wool, and explained that it was the raw material. “And is that just as it comes off the sheep’s back?” I asked, unthinkingly. If a thunderbolt had fallen in our midst the guide could not have been more astonished. “Cotton, Miss!” he said, with grave surprise, “Cotton is a plant!” I inquired for no further information in that cotton mill, but I told the story myself when I reached home, joining in the laughter that followed as heartily as any of my audience.

Curates are more the rule than the exception at the five o’clock meal. Somehow, you always connect the two. Afternoon tea without a curate sounds an anomaly, a something incomplete.

I have had great experience in curates. Ours is a large parish, and many clerical helps are needed. Large, small, nice, objectionable, ugly, handsome–I have met specimens of each and all, and have come to the conclusion that the last kind is the worst. How rarely do you meet a good-looking man who thinks of anything but his appearance. It is strange, for the more lovely a woman is the less apparently conscious she is of her beauty. At any rate, she does not go about with an expression which seems to say, “I am that which is ‘a joy forever’–admire me!”

The “pale young curate” type is perhaps the most general. This poor thing is so depressingly shy–I say depressingly, because his shyness affects his company. You try to draw him out. You ask question after question, and have to supply the answers yourself, only obtaining, by way of reward, despairing upward glances, that are by no means an encouragement to proceed.

The most fatal effect of this shyness, however, lies in the fact that he dare not get up to go! He sits toying with his hat, he picks up his umbrella three or four times, and lets it drop again; finally, starting up with a rush in the middle of a conversation, he hurries out, shaking hands all round with everyone but his hostess!

Would it be a very heinous breach of etiquette, if after an hour and a half of this curate’s company, one should suggest diffidently that it was time to go?

In strong contrast, there is the bold, dashing man, who only comes when he knows all the daughters are at home, not so much because it gives him pleasure to see them, as because he would not deprive them of the pleasure of talking to him. He has a faith in himself that removes mountains; no lady’s heart can beat regularly in his presence, according to his confident opinion.

So on the whole I do not think afternoon tea is so nice abroad as it is at home. It is not so pleasant with many as with a chosen few. I am selfish, I am afraid, but I must confess I enjoy mine most with the sole company of a roaring fire, a very easy chair, and a novel!