CHAPTER II
Business Enterprise
Galena Gittins had her hair screwed up tightly in curling-pins. Reggie Furness was late in coming to do “chores” that morning, and so he had crept in by way of the milk-room door with as little ostentation as possible. He had found by experience that it was not wise to attract attention to himself when he was behind time. Directly he noticed the curling-pins his courage revived. The fair Galena was never hard to live with when there was a festivity to the fore.
She was dashing round at such a rate that she even failed to notice his silent entrance. He picked up the milk-buckets and scurried away to the barn, well pleased at his escape, but actively curious as to the sort of frolic to which Galena was bound that day.
“There’s no one dead, so it can’t be a funeral,” he muttered, as he tied the white cow’s leg to a post to prevent her kicking while he milked. “It isn’t a wedding either, or else I should have been bound to hear about it. Her aunt has gone to Fredericton, so she ain’t going there.”
He was so absorbed in his meditations that he did not notice that the rope had come unfastened, until the cow by an adroit movement knocked him sprawling. He was used to her pranks by this time, and he contrived to keep the bucket from being kicked over, so his own upset did not count; and as he always pretended to himself that the white cow was a playful creature, instead of, as was actually the case, a bad-tempered animal, his feelings were not ruffled by his being rolled over and having his head thumped against a post.
When he carried the milk-buckets in to the little chamber that was scooped out from the side of the hill, he heard signs of unusual bustle in the kitchen, and poking his head cautiously round the post of the door, he was amazed to see a big baking in progress.
“Is that you, Reggie Furness?” called the voice of Miss Galena, who was darting here and there, apparently trying to do three things at once. “Step lively, will you, and help me here. I want eggs whisked, and currants washed, sugar rolled, and a dozen things done all nearly at once. You can’t have a sitting-down breakfast this morning. But none of us have had that. You will have to be content to feed as you run about.”
“I don’t care how I have my breakfast as long as I do have one,” said Reggie, who had got hold of the whisker, and was turning it at a great rate, while the eggs churned into yellow foam under his active exertions.
Galena laughed at the broadness of the hint, but she had not had six brothers without knowing that boys were the hungriest creatures under the sun; so she brought him a great wedge of pumpkin pie, just to keep him from starving, and promised him some hot cookies as soon as they were out of the oven. The pie was fragrant with spice and black with currants. Reggie was in clover for once in his life. Breakfast, which was part of his wage, consisted in a usual way of buckwheat or oatmeal porridge drowned out with skim milk. There was no porridge pot visible this morning, so plainly there was something very unusual on hand.