She got up briskly and began turning back her cuffs. First, she would build the kitchen fire; it must roar and snap, with all the work it had to do to-night. She would heat a lot of water, for only boiling water could take out Stefana's awful starch. While the water was heating, she would eat her supper.
"A good, big supper, it will have to be," smiled this gentled Miss Theodosia. "I've got to get up my strength! No tea-and-toast-and-jam supper to-night." She heated her gridiron smoking hot and broiled a bit of steak. She tossed together little feathery biscuit and made coffee, fragrant and strong. Momently, Miss Theodosia's strength "got up." She moved about the kitchen briskly—when had she launched out upon a night's work like this? Adventure!—call it adventure.
Work to Miss Theodosia had always meant something that other people did,—the Stefanas and their mothers and brothers and fathers. What she herself did, a gentle, dilatory playing at work, hardly merited the name. A bit of dusting, tea-and-toasting, making her own bed, cooking for sheer love of cooking, what did they count in Miss Theodosia's summing up of tasks?
Always there had been some one to do her heavy things. She had put her washings out and taken her dinners in; three times a week she was swept and scrubbed and made immaculate.
But to-night—to-night was different. This was to be no playing at work.
Miss Theodosia rose to the occasion gallantly—indeed, exultantly.
Thrills of enthusiasm ran up, ran down her spine. She prepared for a
night of it.
The dresses immersed in steaming hot water and her supper eaten, she stretched drying-lines, with considerable difficulty, from corner to corner of her kitchen, prepared an ironing-board, and got out long-idle irons. At eight o'clock she stopped for breath. Stefana's starch still resisted all inducements to part with Miss Theodosia's dresses; more hot water was required. After another steamy bath, they were cooled and wrung and draped over the crisscross clotheslines in the hot kitchen. Then Miss Theodosia temporarily retired from the field of battle.
Theodosia Baxter had come back from her travelings to this small ancestral town with a mildly disturbing taste in her mouth. "Settling down" at thirty-six was not at all to her mind; she would not settle down!
"If I catch you doing it, Theodosia Baxter!" she said. "If I catch you growing old! The minute you feel it coming on, you pack up and start for Rome! Or Paris! Or Turkistan! Start for Anywhere! Keep going!"
But, already, did she feel it coming on even before all her trunks were unpacked? She was a little frightened at certain signs. Now, when she sat down heavily—why did she sit down heavily? If some one had called upon her for scores of little services, so that she must hop up again, immediately—little piping voices: "Mother, where's my cap?" "Mother, make Johnnie stop plaguing me!" "Mother, come quick!" If a big John had come home to her, demanding her time or sympathy or service—
"No little Johns—no big one!" She sighed. "Is that the matter with you, Theodosia Baxter? Well, for Heaven's sake, don't tell anybody! Keep a bold front."