"I don't reckon she'll need much looking after," said Mrs. Sanders, "but I'm mortal glad to see you, for you'll be more company for me. We'll have a real good time hobnobbing together. I've got a Mexican woman in the kitchen, but she doesn't cook my way, so I'm going to see about supper. Want to go 'long?"
Mary Lee willingly followed into the large neat kitchen where she watched Mrs. Sanders stir up biscuits for supper and prepare chickens for frying.
"That's just the way we do them at home," said Mary Lee. "Are you from Virginia, Mrs. Sanders?"
"No, but I'm next door to it; I'm from Maryland. I always maintain there's no better cooks in the universe than Marylanders, and that nobody knows so well how to eat good. I've been away from there right smart of a while, but I never saw any place where the eatings suited me so well. Mr. Sanders says that's what first made him take notice to me. He'd eat such an awful good supper at our house, and he kept thinking he'd certainly like it to last, then when he found out I'd made the biscuits and fried the chicken he just set up to me right off. My, I never expected to come to California then or I mightn't have been so particular about my cooking. It's a good bit of a way from home out here."
"Was it at your home in Maryland that you first met him?" asked Mary Lee, interested in Mr. Sanders' courtship.
"Yes, at my father's house. He'd come east for the first time since he left home, and he was down our way. My brother invited him to the house; they'd been to school together when they were boys, and he'd been hunting up his old friends, you see. Well, when he went back he took me along to Texas, and from there we come to California. He's a good bit older than me, but I reckon we get along as well as most. I get to thinking about home once in a while, but I've never regretted marrying."
"You like it out here, don't you?"
"Yes, I like it. At first I pined for the old Eastern Sho', and I yet think it is the best spot on earth, but I'm satisfied. He's a good husband and father and we're better off every year."
Mary Lee watched the deft tossing together of the biscuits, and her own thoughts wandered back to her Virginia home, to Aunt Sarah, with Mitty in the kitchen, and Unc' Landy plodding about doing his chores.
The biscuits done, Mrs. Sanders left the baking of them to the Mexican woman, and returned to the house. "I'll go slick up a bit before supper," she said. "You go make yourself at home anywhere you feel inclined."