Re: [jude & hannah: tea]
That was Jude told, smacked smartly back into line with romance novels primly lined up shoulder-to-shoulder to disapprove of his disbelief in the magic. But he had a little of what lay beneath the laughing girl opposite, not quite stuffing yet but a little of the stitchery that put her together, or Jude thought he did. Conviction and belief, which were not the same thing at all but he sat obediently with head bowed over his tea-cup and a smile that darted upward as he listened to the lecture made for his own self.
He let Louis slide, he of the criminal investigation novel, or perhaps something noir. He could picture Louis in a very long raincoat and with a peaked hat - except Louis wasn't present and subject to conversational ebb and flow, and besides, Daniel was the recluse in the equation but he skipped over that. Hannah, whose disapproval for Biblical stories had been minor eddy in plain sailing shone sunshine and approval once more, and he leaned his chin into his hand once more when she spoke of revolution that came in dribs and drabs.
"Would the Romanovs say revolution took forever?" He grinned, and when the conversation dipped toward St John Rivers once more, Jude leaned back in his chair with dramatic flourish for an audience - one, many, what was the difference, please and thank you? It was dramatic, that was constancy. "Oh, enough about Rivers. Jane is sadly not real, or I would have invited her to tea, let's toss Rivers in the grave with the Bible and Jane Bennett and bury the lot of them," and he caught the eye of one of the women who shopped the General Store enough to see him several times a week, and who looked deeply horrified.
He stood, and collected her tea-cup and that of his own in both hands, pianist fingers on china, delicate as touching keys and exchanged them for fresh at the counter, crumpled bills and a palaver of a customer ahead of him settling on which cookie she wanted most. It gave Jude time, and time he wanted for time needed tying up in ribbons and made presentational. When he came back, it was all cheerful and sunshine his own self and he set down teapot before stacking tea-cups in front of each place.
"What if time could go backwards, if you asked terribly nicely? I think there's a boy - no, a girl - somewhere who can make time reel backward if she asks politely. She was told to, by her governess, to ask politely for anything she wanted. She had a birthday, at which she was very polite and pleasant and a little brother to whom she was not at all. He took her favorite present and broke it to pieces, and the little girl had a tantrum and broke everything else." He glanced at her, and lifted his tea-cup. "How'm I doing so far, please?"