"Afternoon tea" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the desert of a lonesome student life, this friendly hostel seemed to us. Several women whom we knew at home were pouring tea, and we met some nice English and American girls who are studying art and music, and the tea and buns brought to us by friendly hands made the simple afternoon tea take upon it something of the nature of a lovefeast, so warm and kindly ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... never been to an afternoon tea like this before," Octavia said. "It is nothing like ...
— A Fair Barbarian • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... above all others, "such a comfort to her mother." She interviews the cook, she arranges the dinners, she devises light and favourite dishes to blunt the edge of paternal irritability by tickling the paternal palate, she writes out invitations, presides at the afternoon tea-table, and, in short, takes upon herself many of those smaller duties which are as last straws to the maternal back. Another becomes the sworn friend and ally of her brothers, whom she assists in their scrapes ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99, September 6, 1890 • Various
... forgive me if I have not written lately; but we have been on a visit to the Duke and Duchess de Persigny for the past week. I did not have time to do more than dress for driving and drive, dress for afternoon tea, dress ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... race we went to afternoon tea with their Excellencies. The room was full, but there were only one or two of us winners, when one of the A.D.C.s told His Excellency that the Duke of the Abruzzi was just outside and he had asked him to come in. In he came, with two of his staff, full of smiles, rushed towards His ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... two feet high, and close up under it, nearly flush with its sill, stood a substantial six-foot-by-four table, the chairs at either end comfortably filling the rest of the alcove. They could sit here to write or sew, or drink afternoon tea, and look out upon as pleasant a rural landscape—the Malvern Hills—as any suburban villa could command. It was that view, indeed, which had decided Deb to take ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... is called, and the other near the Baths of Diocletian, which Americans frequent to their cost, for the rates approach a New York or London magnificence. The first is rather the more spectacular of the two and is the resort of all the finer sort of afternoon tea-drinkers, who find themselves the observed of observers of all nationalities; there is music and dress, and there are titles of every degree, with as much informality as people choose, if they go to look, ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... were indeed as hopeless as Lady Mary declared. He strolled about the grounds with her; he drank the sweet melody of her voice in Heine's tenderest ballads; he read to her on the sunlit lawn in the lazy afternoon hours; he played billiards with her; he was her faithful attendant at afternoon tea; he gave himself up to the study of her character, which, to his charmed eyes, seemed the perfection of pure and placid womanhood. There might, perhaps, be some lack of passion and of force in this nature, a marked absence of that impulsive feeling which is a ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... so kindly and friendly in manner, that she was emboldened to laugh at the recollection of the tone in which he had alluded to her elaborately-dressed hair and long dresses, and to devise a way of surprising him. She came down one day to afternoon tea in an old school-girlish dress of blue serge, rather short about the ankles, a red and white pinafore, and a crimson sash. Her hair was loose about her neck, and had been combed over her forehead in the fashion in which she wore it in her childish days. Thus attired, she looked ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... invitation to visit Sir Walter Townley (British Minister), I proceeded to the Hague, freed at last from the annoying formality of being continually escorted by an officer or guard. Imagine my pleasure at once more sitting down to afternoon tea in an English drawing-room. I shall never forget the kind thought and solicitude of my hostess, Lady Susan. I almost seemed to be ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight
... experienced. Then Dave had to drive to an address that was given him, shovel the coal down a chute located in the most inaccessible position the premises afforded, and return to the coal yard, where the young man with the collar would facetiously inquire whether Mrs. Blank had invited him in to afternoon tea, or if he had been waiting for a ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... the journals and magazines; conducted a large correspondence; read new French, German, and Italian books of mark; read and translated Euripides and AEschylus; knew all the gossip of the literary clubs, the salons, and the studios; was a frequenter of afternoon tea parties; and then, over and above it, he was Browning—the most profoundly subtle mind that has exercised ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... was revealed by one brief duplicate impression, which came in a few months afterwards when I happened to be out in Brookline, a suburb of Boston, where people used to drive then, as they drive now, on summer afternoons for afternoon tea—only, afternoon tea not having been invented, they drove out to their neighbors' houses for fruit or a ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... the afternoon. Miss Hunter, a tall, dignified-looking woman, was presiding at the afternoon tea-table in the drawing-room of Chatts Chase. Miss Amabel Hunter stood at the window in a rather muddy riding-habit, and she was speaking in her sharp, short tones to her twin sister Hester, who lay back ...
— Bulbs and Blossoms • Amy Le Feuvre
... hotter parts of Spain. It is made of bread crumbs, bonito fish, onions, oil, vinegar, garlic, and cucumbers. All these are beaten into a pulp, then diluted, and bread broken into the mixture. The better classes drink this as we should afternoon tea. Bacalas, or dried cod, is one of the staple dishes of the poor in the north, and the English in Spain also often eat it. The favourite mode of preparation is to first soak out the salt, then let ...
— The Gourmet's Guide to Europe • Algernon Bastard
... child, she wanted to come with us to meet you, but it was Professor Hugel's afternoon. He teaches her German literature, you know. I was anxious for her not to miss his lesson, and she was very good about it. She is coming down to afternoon tea, and of course we shall see her in ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... of tasting books for them. They may or may not be profound students,—some of them are; but we do not expect to meet women like Mrs. Somerville, or Caroline Herschel, or Maria Mitchell at every dinner-table or afternoon tea. But give your elect lady a pile of books to look over for you, and she will tell you what they have for her and for you in less time than you would have wasted in stupefying yourself over a ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Tuesday, a hot August day, with only enough air going to keep our sails filled. At five o'clock I served afternoon tea, and shortly after I went to Williams's cabin in the forward house to dress the wound in his head, a long cut, which was now healing. I passed the captain's cabin, and heard him quarreling with the first mate, ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... are commonly named "La Parisienne," or something like that, or are called "rotisseries." There are some just ordinary restaurants, too, and many immaculate, light-lunch rooms. "Afternoon Tea" is a frequent sign, and one often sees the delicate suggestion in neat gilt, "Sandwiches." Grocers in this part of town, it would seem, handle only "select," "fancy," and "choice" groceries, and "hot-house products." There are a number of fine "markets" ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... break in on you like this, Mrs. Severance," he said with a ghastly feeling that after all he might be entirely wrong, and another that it was queer to have to be so formal, in the afternoon tea sense, with his words when his whole mind was boiling with pictures of everything from Ted as a modern Tannhauser in a New York Venusberg to triangular murder. "I ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... you about God at afternoon tea?" said Feather. "It's the kind of thing a religious Scotch ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Afternoon tea was served on deck amidst an unusual quiet. People soberly canvassed the situation and remarked upon the fact that the darkness increased visibly as they neared the Bay of Naples. Beth couldn't drink her tea, for tiny black atoms fell through the air and floated upon the surface of the liquid. Louise ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... but a niece thirty-five years old, devoted to evangelical church affairs, kept house for me, and she had a multitude of female acquaintances, two or three of whom called every afternoon. Sometimes, to relieve my loneliness, I took afternoon tea, and almost invariably saw the curate. I was the only man present. It was just as if, being strong, healthy, and blessed with a good set of teeth, I were being fed on water-gruel. The bird-wittedness, the absence of resistance and of difficulty, were intolerable. The ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... ourselves whether we're technically at war or not. A lot of us collected, your friend Massey among the rest. I remember particularly when he joined the mob because he was so much taller than the rest of us and came strolling in as if he was going to an afternoon tea instead of getting into an international mess with nearly all the contracting parties drunk and disorderly. There was a good deal of excitement and confusion. I don't believe anybody knows just what happened but a drunken ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... soft. I love the good things of this life so that they unfit me for real service. Do you know what was the matter with my heart when I came away? I do. It was high living. It was sitting with my legs under the mahogany of my millionaire parishioners' tables, driving in their limousines, drinking afternoon tea with their wives, letting them send me to Europe whenever I looked a bit pale. Soft! I was a down pillow, a lump of putty. I, who was supposed to be a ...
— The Brown Study • Grace S. Richmond
... friend, Mr Hesketh! He's going to stay with the Emmetts, and Mrs Emmett is perfectly distracted; she says he's accustomed to so much, she doesn't know how he will put up with their plain way of living. Though what she means by that, with late dinner and afternoon tea every day of her life, ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... Waterworks and occasional afternoon card-parties where the older women wore their Sunday silks and exchanged recipes and household gossip. If only there was something interesting—just a little dash of "atmosphere." If only they drank afternoon tea, or talked about Higher Things, or smoked cigarettes, or wore long ear-rings! But, ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... mostly doing well, in most comfortable quarters, large roomy tents, with comfortable beds, and clean white nurses going about. Pat Duffy turned up as a hospital orderly, looking strangely clean. The air was heavy with rich brogue. Later we strolled off, and shopped and shaved in the town, had afternoon tea, and then went to a hotel and wrote letters till 6.30, when we dined in magnificent style, and then sauntered back, feeling as if an eternity had passed, and lay down in ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... and linger for either the reasoning or the bickering, as it happened, and now, seeing the three there together, I took a provisional seat behind the painter, who made no sign of knowing I was present. Rulledge was eating a caviar sandwich, which he had brought from the afternoon tea-table near by, and he greedily incited Wanhope to go on, in the polite pause which the psychologist had let follow on my appearance, with what he was saying. I was not surprised to find that his talk related to a fact just then intensely interesting to the few, ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells
... by the appearance, a few minutes later, of a rather sullen Annie with a tea tray. Afternoon tea was not a Wheeler institution, but was notoriously a Sayre one. And Nina believed in putting one's best foot foremost, even when that resulted in a state ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... tempestuous conclusion, had stepped softly into the breach, rosy with hope and a definite sense that his time had come. Hermia liked him—had liked him for years. She had gotten used to him as one does to a familiar chair or an article of diet. He was a habit with her like her bedroom slippers or her afternoon tea. He was comfortable, always safe and quite sane, which she was not, and she accepted him in the guise of counselor and friend with the same cheerful tolerance that she gave to her Aunt Harriet Westfield or to Mr. Winthrop of the ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... Mihrbhan Shah is particularly proud of one of his little jobs, which he flatters himself he accomplished in a very neat and artistic manner. I forget the details, but it resulted in the death of five men. I asked him in to afternoon tea, Shah Mirza acting as interpreter. We had a long chat, from which I gained some very useful details about the state of the parties in Chitral, who was likely to help, and who wasn't, also a description of the road to Killa Drasan, which I did not know. ...
— With Kelly to Chitral • William George Laurence Beynon
... time in the past the Spences had been a leisured people. They had brought from the old country the tradition of afternoon tea. Many others had, no doubt, done the same but with these others the tradition had not persisted. In the more crowded life of a new country they had let it go. The Spences had not let it go. It wasn't their way. And in time it had assumed the importance of a survival. It stood for some-thing. ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... he will not be believed. Yet, in spite of the risk, it must be said plainly that at this point Denry actually thought of marriage. An absurd and childish thought, preposterously rash; but it came into his mind, and—what is more—it stuck there! He pictured marriage as a perpetual afternoon tea alone with an elegant woman, amid an environment of ribboned muslin. And the picture appealed to him very strongly. And Ruth appeared to him in a new light. It was perhaps the change in her voice that did it. She appeared to him at once as a ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... later I happened one day to make an afternoon call in Mayfair, at the house of a lady well known in the social and political world, who honours me, if I may say so, with her friendship. Her drawing-room was crowded, and the cheerful ring of afternoon tea-cups was audible through the pleasant medley of women's voices. I joined a group around the hostess, where an animated discussion was in progress on the Irish Coercion Bill, then the leading political topic of the day. The argument interested ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... with the same strange smells and street cries, and almost the same little boys bowling hoops over the very cobbly cobble stones. I had afternoon tea at a patisserie and ate a great many gateaux for the sake of old times. We had a very choppy crossing, and you would most certainly have been sick had you been on board. It seemed to me that I must be coming on one of ...
— Carry On • Coningsby Dawson
... they went on again and finally found the King Frog at home; but Omolo was rather surprised to see the Princess taking afternoon tea with him, and not ...
— The Great Red Frog • Mosnar Yendis (AKA Sidney Ransom)
... far met in the tea-cup. It is the only Asiatic ceremonial which commands universal esteem. The white man has scoffed at our religion and our morals, but has accepted the brown beverage without hesitation. The afternoon tea is now an important function in Western society. In the delicate clatter of trays and saucers, in the soft rustle of feminine hospitality, in the common catechism about cream and sugar, we know that the Worship of Tea is established beyond question. The philosophic resignation of the guest to ...
— The Book of Tea • Kakuzo Okakura
... wooing that was not long a-doing. Her Ladyship and Mr. Jardine came in one evening in time for afternoon tea. The days were closing in by this time, and a fire was welcome. There had been rain, and the fire sparkled on her Ladyship's black curls and her eyelashes as she stood by the fire, taking off the long cloak in which she wrapped herself when she went out walking ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... writes to his sweetheart: "The bullet that wounded me at Mons went into one breast pocket and came out of the other, and in its course passed through your photo." Private G. Ryder vouches for this: "We were having what you might call a dainty afternoon tea in the trenches under shell fire. The mugs were passed round with the biscuits and the 'bully' as best they could by the mess orderlies, but it was hard work messing through without getting more than we wanted. My next-door neighbor, so to speak, ...
— Tommy Atkins at War - As Told in His Own Letters • James Alexander Kilpatrick
... same afternoon of King's assassination Nan Keith, was expecting Sansome in for tea. Afternoon tea was then an exotic institution, practically unknown in California society. Ben Sansome was about the only man of Nan's acquaintance who took it as a matter of course, without either awkwardness, embarrassment, or ill-timed jest. The day had been fine, and several times she had regretted ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... drives, as it can hardly be supposed that people never walk in their gardens. The Hotel des Indes was very comfortable, each visitor having a sitting-room and bedroom opening on a verandah, where he can take his morning coffee and afternoon tea. In the centre of the quadrangle is a building containing a number of marble baths always ready for use; and there is an excellent table d'hote breakfast at ten, and dinner at six, for all which there is a ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... blush at the memory of the real southern cornbread and candied sweet potatoes that were offered him in the initial weeks of his patronage. Gaspard still made these delicacies for luncheon, but they had been almost entirely banished from the dinner menu. Afternoon tea at the Inn was famous for the wonderful waffles produced with Parisian precision from a traditional Virginian recipe, but Collier Pratt never appeared at either of these meals to ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... early dashes into the unexplored land is remembered, because it enriched us with a new synonym. It was at afternoon tea that a sympathetic Sittie (the word means "Mother's younger sister"), knowing that Chellalu had received something thoroughly well earned, asked her in English: "What did Ammal give you this morning?" Chellalu caught at the one ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... almost entirely in the hands of women. The older men come somewhat unwillingly to receptions in the evening, but the presence of a man at an afternoon tea is unusual. The Southerner of the small towns and cities puts away play with his adolescence. The professional man seldom advertises the fact that he has gone hunting or fishing for a day or a week, as it is thought ...
— The New South - A Chronicle Of Social And Industrial Evolution • Holland Thompson
... little thought to the subject. She comes fresh from the schoolroom into the crowded drawing-room, thinking only how best to enjoy herself. The thought of marriage, if near, is yet so far, that it hardly interferes with her pleasure in the waltz, the theatre, or the eternal afternoon tea. ...
— How to Marry Well • Mrs. Hungerford
... was all meant for ex-Private, Captain de facto, and Colonel-elect Willie Robbins. The town was crazy about him. They notified us that the reception they were going to put up would make the Mardi Gras in New Orleans look like an afternoon tea in Bury St. Edmunds with ...
— Options • O. Henry
... the robin carry food to his mate two or three times, and it was so suggestive of afternoon tea that Colin ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... delicate. I think that the best Society novelists at present, who write with a real knowledge of the people they are describing, are W. E. Norris, Julian Sturgis, and Rhoda Broughton." We continued in conversation for some time longer, until the time came for afternoon tea, when Mrs. Henniker suggested that we should join the rest of the party in the ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... better informed in current political affairs, but Peter, instead of joining the cheerful afternoon tea party at the close of the day, raked out a file of the Times from the library, and studied it carefully in his room. There were one or two items of news concerning which he made pencil notes. He had scarcely finished his task before a servant brought in a ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... been so for very many years, and in very many ways. I have been an aesthete. I have lain upon hearth-rugs and eaten passion-flowers. I have clothed myself in breeches of white samite, and offered my friends yellow jonquils instead of afternoon tea. But when aestheticism became popular in Bayswater—a part of London built for the delectation of the needy rich—I felt that it was absurd no longer, and I turned to other things. It was then, one golden summer day, among the flowering woods of Richmond, that I invented ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... however, was so awakened by what he had seen that, as soon as we had been refreshed by a cup of afternoon tea, he suggested that we should go out for a walk; accordingly the whole party proceeded to Kensington Gardens, followed by a curious and somewhat derisive crowd of small boys, who would insist upon advising the Wallypug to "get his hair cut." Now, I happened to ...
— The Wallypug in London • G. E. Farrow
... waiting at home in the hope of hearing in more detail what every separate garment was like. But when she at length extracted the information that Wilson was also there, and that the party had taken afternoon tea ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... stuffed crocodile upon his head paused before the steps of Cairo's gayest hotel and his expectant gaze ranged hopefully over the thronged verandas. It was afternoon tea time; the band was playing and the crowd was at its thickest and brightest. The little tables were surrounded by travelers of all nations, some in tourist tweeds and hats with the inevitable green veils; others, those of more leisurely sojourns, in white serges and diaphanous frocks and flighty ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... said to me, I shall know whom to blame." She paused a moment for her words to take effect. "My father says," she went on, "that women never have any sense of obligation. They don't think of paying back anything but invitations to afternoon tea. I must tell him about you. He'll find you such a splendid illustration. Good-bye, or I shall be late to chemistry." Jean sped off in the direction of ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... Ariel Inn, the hotel being like a Swiss Chalet, perched on some convenient rocks that rose to a height above street level. A few fairly nimble chamois were leaping over these rocks and Warble heard a fairy-like chime of bells as afternoon tea ...
— Ptomaine Street • Carolyn Wells
... touched a button (for the castle was thoroughly wired and there was even a miniature telephone system) and servants brought us up afternoon tea, and a couple of chairs to sit on, and a folding table set out with flowers, and the best toast and the best tea and the best strawberry jam and the best chocolate cake and the best butter that ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... much, but she did not admit it to Johnnie. She and Kitty smiled at each other in that common superiority which their sex gives them to any mere man upon such an occasion. For Mrs. John Green, though afternoon tea was to her too an alien custom, took to it as a duck ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... us. I got caught that way once when I worked in a candy-box factory. I bet I don't again! See here, I'm kind of sorry for you if you thought the Hands was a party where they asked you to sit down and have afternoon tea. Fred Thorpe, the floorwalker in this depart, is a real good feller, and he'd be glad to give us a rest—a big difference between him and some I've knowed! But he dasn't treat us as white as he'd like. In this show every Jack and Jill is watched from above. There ain't nobody except ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... scarcer in Boulogne even during my stay. The petits gateaux got smaller, the hours during which officers might enter restaurants for afternoon tea became painfully shorter. But they were not a whit less enjoyable, reminding one as they did of the dear old days, long before the war was thought of, and before the war of life had taken me to Labrador. If one had hoped that a life in ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... very sorry, Miss Dalziel," I said penitently. "We reserve an hour in the morning and another at bedtime for your uncle's prayers, but we had no idea you had them at afternoon tea, even in Scotland. I believe that you are chaffing, and came up only to swell the chorus. Come, let us all sing together from 'Dumfounder'd ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... "So mother's afternoon tea-party stands a chance of being the last, for the present, at least. By the way, do you ever hear ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... that the dinner was to be without ceremony. This said, her conversation seemed to fail, but she remained by George's side, apart from the others. George saw not the least vestige of the ruinous disorder which, in the society to which he was accustomed, usually accompanied a big afternoon tea, or any sign of a lack of ceremony. He had encountered two male servants in the hall, and had also glimpsed a mulatto woman in a black dress and a white apron, and a Frenchwoman in a black dress and a black apron. Now a third man-servant entered, bearing an enormous ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... holding her own. Her elder sisters were handsome, and a good many young gentlemen, amongst others, came about the house; some of whom, thinking to be facetious, would occasionally begin to tease Miss Nan, she being the youngest admitted to lunch or afternoon tea. But this shy, freckled young person, whose eyes could laugh up so quickly, had a nimbleness of wit and dexterity of fence that usually left her antagonist exceedingly sorry. One can imagine a gay young swallow darting about in the evening, having quite ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... Irishman. Before he answered her he cast a quick look about the long hall. Afternoon tea was just being served, consisting, besides tea, of homemade strawberry jam and lettuce sandwiches made of crisp fresh bread, with plenty of butter; and certain elderly ladies had just arrived, bringing with ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... ever take Betty seriously? I should think one of those board meetings would bear a strong family resemblance to an afternoon tea—rather a ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... me the cue to stir up that lovely mess, or perhaps it was because the thing was sprung on me so unexpected. It come one day when I was busy drawin' pictures of Piddie on the blotter. I hears a giggle, and squints up to see a pair that looked as if they'd just broke away from an afternoon tea. He was a husky youth in a frock coat, with a face like a full moon and a voice that didn't call for any megaphone. The other was a her, and she was a bundle of tuttifrutti, the kind you see floatin' by in sixty horsepowers, all veils ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... service we took Rob for a run, then three of the men turned up and did not depart till after six o'clock. We usually have three meals a day: breakfast, dinner and supper, but on Sundays generally allow ourselves afternoon tea. ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow
... Susan, "if mother would only consent to it, is no use to us, and would look very handsome here." "Real silver, and old silver, which is so much the rage, and a thing she could use every day when she has her visitors for afternoon tea," said Susan to Jane. "It is rather small," said Miss Hill, doubtfully. "But quite enough for two people," said the other, forgetting that she had just declared that the teapot would be serviceable when Elinor ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... of change in the habits of life. When I was a boy coffee was unknown for breakfast, cocoa had not become known as a beverage, and tea was regularly drunk. We seldom took lunch, nor did the ladies, and afternoon tea was unheard of. Instead, tea was brought into the drawing-room about eight in the evening, and was always drunk very weak and sweet. In those times it was invariably from China and ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... little "crowd" imaginable. They had been thoughtful enough to warn her that they were coming, too, so that she could set the old manse living-room in its pleasantest order, build a crackling apple-wood fire in the fireplace, and get out her best thin china and silver with which to serve afternoon tea—she made it chocolate, with vivid recollection of their tastes; and added deliciously substantial though delicate sandwiches, with plenty of the fruitiest and nuttiest kinds of little cakes. She had donned the one real afternoon frock she possessed, a clever make-over out of nothing ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... as nearly as one could see it in the darkness, a sprawling bungalow, with courts, pergolas and terraces bursting out on all sides of it. I could fairly see it of a fine afternoon, with its showy master sitting on one of the showy porches, serving afternoon tea in his best manner to the best people of Santa Ysobel. Just the husband for that doll-faced girl, if she only thought so. What could she have done with ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... he liked. He tasted the bacon, he feasted on butter, he burned his toes on the tea-pot—in fact, he did whatever came into his little head. At lunch he again presented himself, and he came to the drawing-room for afternoon tea. ...
— The Story of a Robin • Agnes S. Underwood
... could fill another book with anecdotes, telling how I took possession of Beacon Street, and learned to distinguish the lord of the manor from the butler in full dress. I might trace my steps from my bare room overlooking the lumber-yard to the satin drawing-rooms of the Back Bay, where I drank afternoon tea with gentle ladies whose hands were as delicate as their porcelain cups. My journal of those days is full of comments on the contrasts of life, that I copied from my busy thoughts in the evening, after a visit to my aristocratic friends. Coming straight from the cushioned refinement of Beacon ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... of old Spanish gardens in Monterey. And between the boards that cover a door in the high wall, one may peek and catch a glimpse of hollyhocks in a row and roses running wild, trellises of green lattice and ghosts of beautiful ladies having afternoon tea. ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey
... She knew her power; it was a look the elder woman could rarely resist. For with all their vast differences in temperament there had grown up a warm attachment between these two, since that day, now several years past, when they had run away together from an afternoon tea. ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... if she is not taught, and she may, in these plain-spoken times, obtain a wholly erroneous theory of life and morality from a newspaper report which she reads without intention in an idle moment while enjoying her afternoon tea. We are in a state of transition, we women, and the air is so full of ideas that it would be strange if an active mind did not catch some of them; and I find myself that stray theories swallowed ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... beginnings of politics. Primitive woman in the cave not only dressed his game, but she cooked the animal for food, made clothing of its skin, necklaces and bracelets of its teeth, passementerie of its claws, and needles of its sharper bones. What wonder that she had no time for an afternoon tea? ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... especially when he's only there for a short visit. I suppose I shouldn't call it a visit, as it's his own house, but it seems the best word. And for her to be a whole day out, not in at luncheon, and a train-show at afternoon tea-time, would have been just what he doesn't like. But it couldn't be helped now, as others were counting on her, especially Mrs. Chasserton, ...
— The Girls and I - A Veracious History • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... writers in the daily and weekly Press who dare to find little significance and less beauty in the Bayreuth representation; and, to do them bare justice, until lately they have been fairly successful in persuading the world to think with them. Verily, they have their reward—they partake of afternoon tea at Villa Wahnfried; they enjoy the honour of bowing low to the second Mrs. Wagner; Wagner's legal descendants cordially take them by the hand. And they go away refreshed, and again spread the report of the artistic and moral and religious supremacy of Bayreuth; and the world listens and goes up ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... at the Taws moved in the ordinary routine of a great English household. At 7 a gong sounded for rising, at 8 a horn blew for breakfast, at 8.30 a whistle sounded for prayers, at 1 a flag was run up at half-mast for lunch, at 4 a gun was fired for afternoon tea, at 9 a first bell sounded for dressing, at 9.15 a second bell for going on dressing, while at 9.30 a rocket was sent up to indicate that dinner was ready. At midnight dinner was over, and at 1 a.m. the tolling of a bell summoned the ...
— Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... you think!" said the lion. "Ordinarily I'd save you for afternoon tea, but I happen to be upset enough and hungry enough to eat you right now." And he picked up my father in his front paws to feel ...
— My Father's Dragon • Ruth Stiles Gannett
... of the Record proved so entertaining that she forgot all about the clipping until she had reached Fairview, and had satisfied a somewhat imperious appetite by a combination of lunch and afternoon tea. Fairview was the "summer place" of Mr. Augustus P. Flint, her father, on a shelf of the hills in the town of Tunbridge, equidistant from Leith and Ripton: and Mr. Flint was the president of the Imperial ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... snugness, a charming lack of formality, about the ceremony of afternoon tea in an English country-house—it is much too indefinite a rite to dignify it by the name of meal—which makes it the most pleasant reunion of the day. For English country-house parties consist, for the most part, of a succession of meals to which the guests flock the more congenially ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... you, together with the booklet, a sample of our Frunut, reg. (a preparation of selected nuts and fruit that is as delightful as it is sustaining); samples of Stamanut Wholemeal Biscuits (a valuable and most economical food), and of our Afternoon Tea Biscuits, and a good sample of our Special Pale Roasted Coffee. The whole ...
— Food Remedies - Facts About Foods And Their Medicinal Uses • Florence Daniel
... trapeze work and that. But they're sleepy now; you fed them too much for just an afternoon tea. Let's leave them to their nap, and train ...
— Patty's Success • Carolyn Wells
... of the year is October—the time of day is five o'clock. In the vicarage drawing-room the afternoon tea-table has just been set out, and the fire just lit, for it is chilly; but one of the long French windows leading into the garden is still open, and through it Vera ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... roses, and even begun to nibble at a Jackmanni clematis that I am trying to persuade to climb up a tree trunk. The gloomy gardener happened to be ill in bed, and the assistant was at vespers—as Lutheran Germany calls afternoon tea or its equivalent—so the nurse filled up the holes as well as she could with mould, burying the crushed and mangled roses, cheated for ever of their hopes of summer glory, and I stood by looking on dejectedly. The June baby, who is two feet square ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... amongst these Orders to be reckoned with. Even Mrs. Besant's followers, headed by the Co-Masons, described as a group which "attracts a large number of idle women who have leisure to take a little occultism with their afternoon tea," might be liable to ask, "Who are these Germans to interfere?" But the real obstacle to success was held to be British Freemasonry, to which a certain number of students of occult science, including all the members of the S.R.I.A., belonged. ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... At afternoon tea there was no milk served. "There was none," Sam explained blandly. "The missus had drunk it all. Missus bin finissem milk all about," he said When the lubras were brought back, THEY said THEY had "knocked up longa scrub," and ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... than the ordinary afternoon tea. Special cards are engraved, and if any special entertainment is provided, the fact may be indicated by the words, "Music," or "Miscellaneous Program" (when readings and music are interspersed). Or, ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... to the regular meaning, Tea can also mean a light snack or a meal (i.e., where Tea is served). In particular, Morning Tea (about 10 AM) and Afternoon Tea (about 3 PM) are nothing more than a snack, but Evening Tea (about 6 PM) is a meal. When just "Tea" is used, it usually means the evening ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... of afternoon tea," exclaimed the Colonel, as he settled himself comfortably in an easy chair and seized upon the chicken. "Did you feed your ...
— The Merriweather Girls and the Mystery of the Queen's Fan • Lizette M. Edholm
... afternoon arrived; two o'clock struck, and I was beginning to fear no one was coming for me, when, turning to look out the window for the eighteenth time, I saw the straight blunt nose of Harold Beecham passing. Grannie was serving afternoon tea on the veranda. I did not want any, so got ready while my escort ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... Princess Street and Via Nazionale are the highways of the world. Trod in literature, asterisked in guide-books, and pictured on postal cards, their habits are celebrated. Who does not know that Fifth Avenue is the most rococo boulevard in the world, and that it drinks its afternoon tea from etched, thin-stemmed glasses? Who does not know that Rue de la Paix runs through more novels than any other paved thoroughfare, and that Piccadilly bobbies have wider chest expansion than the ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... want you. I keep your room so nice. I dust it myself every day. Mamma makes me have tea in the drawing-room now, and then I have a little pudding from their dinner, because, you see, one can't eat so much at ladies' afternoon tea. But I was too miserable at tea alone in the school-room. I have wrapped up our teapot, after Harvey had made it very bright, and I won't ever make tea out of it till you come home. Oh, Geoffy, ...
— Great Uncle Hoot-Toot • Mrs. Molesworth
... were drawn, the fire blazed brightly, the lamp on the console at the side of the room threw a soft pleasant glow on the dainty table set out temptingly for "afternoon tea," which, notwithstanding their long residence in France, Auntie and her nieces were very fond of. And with the little exertion of making all as bright and pretty as they could, the girls' ...
— A Christmas Posy • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... no misnomer. From the most stately and beautiful ceremonials of balls at the court of the Quirinale, in ducal palaces, or at the embassies; of dinners whose every detail suggests stage pictures in their magnificence, to the simple afternoon tea, where conversation and music enchant the hours; the morning call en tete-a-tete, and the morning stroll, or the late afternoon drive,—a season in Rome prefigures itself, by the necromancy of retrospective vision, as a resplendent panorama of pictorial ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... to Hill's imagination. So that he became, as it were, a champion of the fallen and oppressed, albeit to outward seeming only a self-assertive, ill-mannered young man, and an unsuccessful champion at that. Again and again a skirmish over the afternoon tea that the girl students had inaugurated left Hill with flushed cheeks and a tattered temper, and the debating society noticed a new quality of sarcastic bitterness in ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... chair under the shadow of the cedars a wicker table was set out with the paraphernalia of afternoon tea. On some cushions at her feet reclined Courtenay Youghal, smoothly preened and youthfully elegant, the personification of decorative repose; equally decorative, but with the showy restlessness of a dragonfly, Comus disported his ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... That afternoon tea on the lawn was the beginning of the great change in our life at the rectory. Prior to that Hephzy and I had, golfly speaking, been playing it as a twosome. Now it became a threesome, with other players added at frequent intervals. At luncheon next day our invalid, ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... read, or made some one read, the scraps which seemed most worthy in the reviews and magazines of the last issues, and at four the husbands and brothers and neighbors generally dropped in, and there was afternoon tea. ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... been in readiness if Mrs. Venables had been expected for a single moment. It showed the youth of Morna Woodgate that she should harbor a wish to compete with the wealthiest woman in the neighborhood, even in the matter of afternoon tea, and her breeding that no such thought was legible in her ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... the shady garden, and the Baron accepted Madame's offer of refreshment on the terrace, whither a servant brought a tray of liqueurs. The pleasant habit of afternoon tea had not yet been introduced across the channel, and French ladies had still something ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... parcel for Lesley. He had been introduced to her one day in the street, therefore there could be nothing strange in his going in and asking for her, Ethel said. And would he please go about four o'clock, so as to catch Miss Lesley Brooke at afternoon tea. ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... closed in. For it is the recent building boom that has at last caused the enclosure to take its full effect. Before that began, not more than ten or twelve years ago, there were abundant patches of heath still left open; and on many a spot where nowadays the well-to-do have their tennis or their afternoon tea, of old I have seen donkeys peacefully grazing. The donkeys have had to go, their room being wanted, and not many cottagers can keep a donkey now; but kept they were, and in considerable numbers, until these ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... indifferently and leaned up against a tree which, growing before the cabin, had escaped the sweep of the avalanche. "Lord! Don't I know what you two cut-throats stand ready to do to me? And no one any the wiser. Well, what the hell do I care? But say, Seagreave, since we're all having this nice little afternoon tea talk together, sociable as a Sunday school, it might do you good to take some account of the has-beens. Here's Bob, he had her before I did, but that ain't taking away the fact that I had her once, by God! I guess everybody understands that there's ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... with them, and they were dotted on the grass like punctuation marks on a green page. There were so many that not even wise Mother Magpie or old Master Owl could count them, and they all talked at the same time, like ladies at an afternoon tea, ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... treat to us," he said. "My mother is very fond of flowers. Will you come upstairs and see her? We shall find afternoon tea going on, ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... came home from some afternoon tea where she had been talking to a number of "conscientious" housekeepers of the old school until she had been stricken with a guilty feeling that she had been loafing on the job. To be sure the meals were good, and on time; the house was clean; the beds were made; and ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... in October of 1820 the powers met in conference, Metternich found an opportunity for cementing his influence over Alexander which had been wanting amid the turmoil and feminine intrigues of Vienna and Aix. Here, in confidence begotten of friendly chats over afternoon tea, the disillusioned autocrat confessed his mistake. "You have nothing to regret,'' he said sadly to the exultant chancellor, "but I have!''12 The issue was momentous. In January Alexander had still upheld the ideal of a free confederation of the European states, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... opened at that moment for the afternoon tea, which was earlier than usual, to follow of Miss Mohun's reaching the station in time for her train. Lady Merrifield was to drive her, and it was the turn of Dolores to go out, so that she shared the refection instead of waiting for gouter. In the midst ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... The afternoon tea—the strawberries and cream which make a coolness and delight in the midst of the raging day—has been erected by woman into one of London's daily social events; and though the novelist has not discovered the fact up ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... a whole day ashore. Mrs. Milward and maid, and her young friends Miss Leigh and Mr. Shafto, Herr Bernhard, the Pomeroys, Mrs. Lacy and several of her satellites, breakfasted at the Galle Face Hotel, and subsequently made trips in rickshaws, shopped in the bazaar, and had afternoon tea at Mount Lavinia. ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... depended upon tact. She judged that if she asked Miss Morley, tired at the end of a busy morning, she would probably meet with a curt refusal, but that if she found her, seated in her own bed-sitting-room, soothed with afternoon tea and reading a delectable book, her sympathy would be much more readily aroused. On this occasion Delia's judgment was correct. After a perfectly harmonious interview with the Principal she scurried back to her fellow Camellia Buds, her face one ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... complementary courses of beefsteak, fritters and cheese. Fortunately for those of less vigorous appetite, mine host of the Nederlanden, far in advance of his Javanese fraternity, kindly provides a simple "tiffin" as an alternative to this Gargantuan repast. Afternoon tea is served in the verandah, and at eight o'clock the Dutch contingent, having slept off the effects of the rice table, prepares with renewed energies to attack a heavy dinner. New Year's Eve is celebrated by a very bombardment of fireworks ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... table he deftly arranged the dishes with all the smiling ease of one to whom afternoon tea is the only business toward, and to whom an attempted murder is wholly alien. He impressed St. George vaguely as one who seemed to have risen from the dead of the crudities of mere events and to be living in a rarer atmosphere. The lawyer's face ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... be accused of harbouring a bevy of odalisques at No. 20 Lingfield Terrace? Calumny and Exaggeration walk abroad, arm in arm, even on the north side of Regent's Park. If they had spied Carlotta at my window this morning, they would have looked in for afternoon tea at my Aunt Jessica's and have waylaid Mrs. Ralph Ordeyne outside the Oratory. The question is: Shall Truth anticipate them? I think not. Every family has its irrepressible, impossible, unpractical member, its enfant terrible, who is forever doing the wrong thing with the best intentions. ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... and is deeply sorry for the evil she has done to Kashima; but Major Vansuythen cannot understand why Mrs. Boulte does not drop in to afternoon tea at least three times a week. "When there are only two women in one Station, they ought to see a great deal of each other," ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... soul—oh, how hard it is to put the extreme of emotion into the terms of human speech!—but I did not dare to hope that your feelings were as deep. I hardly ventured to tell even you how I really felt. Somehow, in these days of lawn-tennis and afternoon tea, a strong strong passion, such a passion as one reads of in books and poems, seems out of place. I thought that it would surprise, even frighten you, perhaps, if I were to tell you all that I felt. And now you have written me two letters, which contain all that ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... his strong shoulders and brawny arms could use the scythe as well as any of the men. The Vicar paid occasional visits to the hayfields, and Betto was busy from morning to night filling the baskets with the lunch of porridge and milk, or the afternoon tea for the haymakers, or preparing the more ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... on Hampstead Heath to find that Salthaven, or a whiff of it, had come to her. A deep voice, too well known to be mistaken, fell on her ears as she entered the front door, and hastening to the drawing-room she found her aunt entertaining Captain Trimblett to afternoon tea. One large hand balanced a cup and saucer; the other held a plate. His method of putting both articles in one hand while he ate or drank might have excited the envy of a practised juggler. When Joan entered the room she found her aunt, with her eyes riveted on a piece of the captain's ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs
... about the play he was writing, and then they talked about one another. They had their afternoon tea soon after four, for Mr. Manley had to return to the Castle to deal with any letters that the five o'clock post ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson |
