CHAPTER XXI.
OPEN SECRETS "Will you have tea ?" asked Olivia.
St.George brought a deck cushion and tucked it in the willow steamer chair and said adoringly that he would have tea.Tea.In a world where the essentials and the inessentials are so deliciously confused, to think that tea, with some one else, can be a kind of Heaven.
"Two lumps ?" pursued Olivia.
"Three, please," St.George directed, for the pure joy of watching her hands.

There were no tongs.
"Aren't the rest going to have some ?" Olivia absently shared her attention, tinkling delicately about among the tea things.

"Doesn't every one want a cup of tea ?" she inquired loud enough for nobody to hear.

St.George, shifting his shoulder from the rail, looked vaguely over the deck of _The Aloha_, sighed contentedly, and smiled back at her.

No one else, it appeared, would have tea; and there was none to regret it.
St.George's cursory inspection had revealed the others variously absorbed, though they were now all agreed in breathing easily since Barnay, interlarding rational speech with Irishisms of thanksgiving, had announced five minutes before that the fires were up and that in half an hour _The Aloha_ might weigh anchor.