“That would be one way of making money, certainly; but I fancy it would hardly pay in the long run, because when I am very busy cooking I should find it an intolerable nuisance to have a lot of people crowding in to smell the savoury odours from my oven and stew-pans,” Nell answered, with a smile, as she served the two customers as quickly as she could.
There was a great bowl of beans being kept hot on the stove, flanked by another great bowl of potatoes which had been steamed with their skins on; and the stream of customers coming in soon disposed of the contents of both bowls.
But, without doubt, the most popular portion of Nell’s stock-in-trade were the pies. These were of varied sorts; there were meat-pies, apple-pies, huckleberry-pies, blueberry-pies, and pies filled with a savoury mess of vegetables and herbs chopped fine and mixed with suet. The last-named were, perhaps, the most popular of all; one of them, with a couple of good-sized potatoes, made a comfortable meal for a man at a very small cost indeed.
There was no Irish stew to-night, for Nell thought it well to vary the menu as much as she could. A nine-quart boiler of soup was fizzing and bubbling on the stove—very good soup it was, too; the rough cookery which Nell had learned during those lonely years on Blue Bird Ridge was standing her in good stead now, since it had taught her the art of making good soup from next to nothing.
The door from the kitchen to the living-room was kept closely shut this evening, for Nell did not want Mrs. Lorimer to be worried by the commotion of buying and selling, or by the odours of the hot little kitchen.
Nell heard the bustle of arrival; but the kitchen was thronged just then with men buying their suppers, so she could not go to give the travellers a welcome. But she was relieved when, a little later, Patsey slipped out from the sitting-room and helped her by ladling the soup from the boiler. She was so tired that even a little help was welcome.
By this time the potatoes had all gone; there were only a very few beans left; the stock of pies had diminished until there were only six or seven left, and the kitchen looked as if an invading army had swept through it.
Nell left Patsey in charge then, and stole into the next room to welcome her family. Teddy and the baby were sitting in front of the fire eating jam and bread, licking sticky fingers and enjoying themselves generally, watched over by Flossie, who was hovering about them like an anxious, motherly hen guarding her chickens.
“Oh, Nell, what a lovely house this is!” cried the little girl, as she gave Nell a rapturous welcome.
“It is lovely now you have all come to make it look homely; but it was rather lonely before,” said Nell, stooping to kiss the rather jammy faces of the two small boys.