"Mason prefers to switch over to Tea, when it is Dixon's turn to begin shaking his head. "Can't understand how anyone abides that stuff." "How so?" Mason unable not to react. "Well, it's disgusting, isn't it? Half-rotted Leaves, scalded with boiling Water and then left to lie, and soak, and bloat?" "Disgusting? this is Tea, Friend, Cha,-- what all tasteful London drinks,-- that," pollicating the Coffee-Pot, "is what's disgusting." "Au contraire," Dixon replies, "Coffee is an art, where precision is all,-- Water-Temperature, mean particle diameter, ratio of Coffee to Water or as we say, CTW, and dozens more Variables I'd mention, were they not so clearly out of thy technical Grasp,-- " "How is it," Mason pretending amiable curiosity, "that of each Pot of Coffee, only the first Cup is ever worth drinking,-- and that, by the time I get to it, someone else has already drunk it?" Dixon shrugs. "You must improve your Speed . . . ? As to the other, why aye, only the first Cup's any good, owing to Coffee's Sacramental nature, the Sacrament being Penance, entirely absent from thy sunlit World of Tay,-- whereby the remainder of the Pot, often dozens of cups deep, represents the Price for enjoying that first perfect Cup." "Folly," gapes Mason. "Why, ev'ry cup of Tea is perfect . . . ?" "For what? curing hides?"