Rachel had less difficulty with the supper than she feared, whereby also her good-humour was fostered.  With half a cold leg of mutton, some cheeses, and the magnificent fancy remains of an At Home tea, arrayed with the d’oyleys and embroidered cloths which brides always richly receive in the Five Towns, a most handsome and impressive supper can be concocted.  Rachel was astonished at the splendour of her own table.  Mr. Batchgrew treated this supper with unsurpassable tact.  The adjectives he applied to it were short and emphatic and spoken with a full mouth.  He ate the supper; he kept on eating it; he passed his plate with alacrity; he refused naught.  And as the meal neared its end he emitted those natural inarticulate noises from his throat which in Persia are a sign of high breeding.  Useless for Rachel in her heart to call him a glutton—­his attitude towards her supper was impeccable.

And now the solid part of the supper was over.  One extremity of the Chesterfield had been drawn closer to the fire—­an operation easily possible in its new advantageous position—­and Louis as master of the house had mended the fire after his own method, and Rachel sat upright (somewhat in the manner of Mrs. Maldon) in the arm-chair opposite Mr. Batchgrew, extended half-reclining on the Chesterfield.  And Mrs. Tams entered with coffee.

“You’ll have coffee, Mr. Batchgrew?” said the hostess.

“Nay, missis!  I canna’ sleep after it.”

Secretly enchanted by the sweet word “missis,” Rachel was nevertheless piqued by this refusal.

“Oh, but you must have some of Louise’s coffee,” said Louis, standing negligently in front of the fire.

Already, though under a month old as a husband, Louis, following the eternal example of good husbands, had acquired the sure belief that his wife could achieve a higher degree of excellence in certain affairs than any other wife in the world.  He had selected coffee as Rachel’s speciality.

“Louise’s?” repeated old Batchgrew, puzzled, in his heavy voice.

Rachel flushed and smiled.

“He calls me Louise, you know,” said she.

“Calls you Louise, does he?” Batchgrew muttered indifferently.  But he took a cup of coffee, stirred part of its contents into the saucer and on to the Chesterfield, and began to sup the remainder with a prodigious splutter of ingurgitation.

“And you must have a cigarette, too,” Louis carelessly insisted.  And Mr. Batchgrew agreed, though it was notorious that he only smoked once in a blue moon, because all tobacco was apt to be too strong for him.

“You can clear away,” Rachel whispered, in the frigid tones of one accustomed to command cohorts of servants in the luxury of historic castles.

“Yes, ma’am,” Mrs. Tams whispered back nervously, proud as a major-domo, though with less than a major-domo’s aplomb.