"It is a bit of a walk, isn't it?" she agrees, leaving her current batch a moment to pull down two teacups and saucers from a nearby cupboard. Under normal circumstances, the poking might bother her a bit--in a vaguely irritable way that she would immediately smother under a veneer of courtesy--but at the moment she's still so pleased for the company that she's willing to grant more leeway than she usually would for minor infractions like that. And really, he's just lucky she hasn't put on the gooey chocolate icing yet, or it'd really be a mess. "But it's so nice once you get there. Have you found yourself chasing down any books yet? It's tedious, I know, but it's part of the experience."

She sets the teacups on the table and then goes back for the box of tea, in the same cupboard but on a higher shelf; it's high enough that she has to stand up on tiptoe to each it, which is half due to the frequency with which Rosella drinks tea, and half because this box in particular is a variety she generally reserves for special occasions. "I'm better now," she confesses after a moment, more to the cupboard than to Nigel, by virtue of how she's standing. "It's a silly curse, I know, but it really only gets bad when I'm on my own. Out of sight, but never out of mind, I suppose the saying would go."