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To prevent the conversation from flagging, I said, “Eliza, dear, what are you making?”

She frowned hard at me, shook her head slightly, and asked Miss Sakers about the special preacher for Epiphany Sunday.

I at once guessed that Eliza was doing something for Miss Sakers’ stall at the bazaar, and had intended to keep it secret.

I smiled. “Miss Sakers,” I said, “I do not know what Eliza is making, but I am quite sure it is for you.”

There was a dead silence. Miss Sakers and Eliza both blushed. Then Miss Sakers said, without looking at me, “I think you are mistaken.”

I felt so sure that I was mistaken that I blushed, too.

Eliza hurriedly hid her work in the work-basket, and said, “It is very close in here. Let me show you round our little garden.”

They both went out, without taking any notice of me. Not having had much tea, I cut myself another slice of cake. While I was in the middle of it, Miss Sakers and Eliza came back, and Miss Sakers said good-bye to me very coldly. I offered to raise my bazaar donation to ten shillings, but she did not seem to have heard me.

* * * * *

“How could you say that?” said Eliza, when Miss Sakers had gone. “It was most tactless–and not very nice.”

“I thought you were doing something for the bazaar. What were you making, then?”

She did not actually tell me, but she implied it in a delicate way.

“Well,” I said, “of course I wouldn’t have called attention to it if I had known, but I don’t think you ought to have been doing that work when Miss Sakers was here.”

“I’ve no time to waste, and I always make mine myself. I was most careful to keep them hidden. You are very tactless.”

“I don’t think much of that Miss Sakers,” I said. “Why should we go to this expense,” pointing to the cakes, “for a woman of that kind?”