The mother turned to get it, but Gilbert was before her, and gently lifting the lad into it, he started it toward the little kitchen where stood the supper-table.
“Ma mère is a famous cook,” said the lad with a bright smile. “She makes appetite when it has forgotten to grow.”
“So he say,” said Lizzette with a shrug. “I only follow ze way of my art.”
The doctor, who had long been silent, glanced up as they seated themselves at the table, and asked: “Do you indeed think cookery an art?”
“Oui, oui, sir. Ze grand art, sir. Ze grain of ze man ees as ze food he eat; if it be coarse, he coarse too. Strong, may be, but not ze fine gentilhomme who eferywhere see ze leetle beauties of life, and so rest you wiz ze gracefulness of his way.”
“Perhaps you are right, madam,” said the doctor gravely, “although I confess I had never looked at it in that light.”
“Eet ees like ze art of ozair sings. Ze leetle touch zat makes ze picture, and as Antoine say, ze poetry of Shakespeare. Will it please you to speak ze grace?”
Lizzette’s supper-table was a sight to tempt less weary and hungry wayfarers than our dispirited quartette. It was simplicity itself, the principal dish being a salad so crisp in its delicate ravigote of finely-flavored herbs that Elsie declared it “a mortgage on the summer, since it had stolen all its sweetest flavors.”
Lobster rissoles, a mushroom omelette, with cold bread, a soupçon of preserved plums, black coffee, and tea served from the depths of a Japanese cosey, completed the menu.
“The salad, Miss Elsie, ees made of ze weeds of ze wayside,” said Lizzette. “Vous Anglais despise ze sings ze French live by. I make zis salad of ze herb you call dandelion; I find it growing eferywhere. I mix it wiz ze cressom—you call it water-cress—growing by ze brooks, toss it up wiz ze ravigote of tarragon, chervil et bumet, and behold you have, as you say, ‘ze summer in mortgage to ze winter.’”