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OMELETTE - Helen with the High Hand
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"Do you like it?" she inquired.
He paused, as though reflecting whether he liked it or not. "Ay," he said, judicially, "it's none so bad. I could do a bit more o' that."
"Well," she urged him, "do help yourself. Take it all. I shan't eat any more."
"Sure?" he said, trembling lest she might change her mind.
Then he ate the remaining half of the omelette, making five-sixths in all. He glanced at her surreptitiously, in her fine dress, on which was not a single splash or stain. He might have known that so extraordinary and exotic a female person would not concoct anything so trite as a Yorkshire pudding or scrambled eggs.
Not till the omelette was an affair of the past (so far as _his_ plate was concerned) did he begin to attend to his tea--his tea which sustained a mystery as curious as, and decidedly more sinister than, the mystery of the omelette.
He stared into the cup; then, to use the Five Towns phrase, he supped it up.
There could be no doubt; it was his special China tea. It had a peculiar flavour (owing, perhaps, to the precedence given to milk), but it was incontestably his guarded and locked tea. How had she got it?
"Where didst find this tea, lass?" he asked.
"In the little corner cupboard in the scullery," she said. "I'd no idea that people drank such good China tea in Bursley."
"Ah!" he observed, concealing his concern under a mask of irony, "China tea was drunk i' Bursley afore your time."
"Mother would only drink Ceylon," said she.
"That doesna' surprise me," said he, as if to imply that no vagary on the part of Susan could surprise him. And he proceeded, reflectively: "In th' corner cupboard, sayst tha?"
"Yes, in a large tin box."
A large tin box. This news was overwhelming. He rose abruptly and went into the scullery. Indubitably there was a large tin box, pretty nearly half full of his guarded tea, in the corner cupboard.
He returned, the illusion of half a lifetime shattered. "That there woman was a thief!" he announced.
"What woman?"
"Mrs. Butt."
And he explained to Helen all his elaborate precautions for the preservation of his China tea. Helen was wholly sympathetic. The utter correctness of her attitude towards Mrs. Butt was balm to him. Only one theory was conceivable. The wretched woman must have had a key to his caddy. During his absence from the house she must have calmly helped herself to tea at five shillings a pound--a spoonful or so at a time. Doubtless she made tea for her private consumption exactly when she chose. It was even possible that she walked off from time to time with quantities of tea to her own home. And he who thought himself so clever, so much cleverer than a servant!
"You can't have her back, as she isn't honest, even if she comes back," said Helen.
"Oh, her won't come back," said James. "Fact is, I've had difficulties with her for a long time now." 
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