To stir tea in the pot is to stir up strife. Bubbles in your cup show that kisses are coming, but if you put in milk before the sugar . . . you risk losing your sweetheart. If a girl allows a man to pour out a second cup of tea for her she will succumb to his designs. (I have been unable to discover whether it works the other way around.) And of course there is the advance information given by a floating tea-leaf that a stranger is coming, the number of taps with one hand it takes to shake it off the back of the other hand showing how many days there are to wait. People who make tea with water which is not boiling must expect a lot of strangers.