In nothing is the English genius for domesticity more notably declared than in the institution of this festival—almost one may call it so—of afternoon tea. Beneath simple roofs, the hour of tea has something in it of sacred; for it marks the end of domestic work and worry, the beginning of restful, sociable evening. The mere chink of cups and saucers tunes the mind to happy repose.

Gissing treats afternoon tea as a small, secular ritual that reveals what he sees as a distinctly English talent for making private life orderly and consoling. The “festival” language elevates an everyday pause into something quasi-religious: a shared hour that divides labor from leisure and converts the household from a site of “work and worry” into one of sociability. His attention to sound—the “chink of cups and saucers”—suggests how material details can cue emotion and behavior, training the mind toward calm. The passage also implies a social ideal: domestic stability and modest comfort (“beneath simple roofs”) as a cultural achievement rather than mere habit.