“To be clever in the afternoon argues that one is dining nowhere in the evening.”
“You can serve high tea around the dining room table, but afternoon tea is more of a living room occasion, with everything brought in on a tray or a cart.”
“To begin with, I dined there on Monday, and once a week is quite enough to dine with one's own relations.”
“There was no one to really argue with, but Mama managed it expertly every chance she had. She could argue with the entire world in that kitchen and almost every evening, she did.”
“Nowhere is the English genius of domesticity more notably evident than in the festival of afternoon tea. The [...] chink of cups and the saucers tunes the mind to happy repose.”
“Now that cleverness was the fashion most people were clever – even perfect fools; and cleverness after all was often only a bore: all head and no body.”