Freddie had remembered Jacqueline over night, perhaps because of the piece of shapeless chocolate that she had popped into his mouth. He threw himself upon her with gurgles of greeting.
“He takes to you all right,” said Grandma, as she paused with a pan of biscuits in her hand, midway from stove to table. “I wonder now if a smart girl like you couldn’t take it on herself to dress him mornings. Every minute counts this time o’ day, and your Aunt Martha has her hands full.”
“Sure I will,” Jacqueline promised airily. She was promising only for a few days—just as few as she chose to make them. And she really did like Freddie. He was more fun than a puppy dog.
“Just pump that pitcher full of water, Jackie, and fill the glasses at the table,” Aunt Martha struck in briskly. “Ring the bell, Nellie. Breakfast’s about ready.”
Nellie sprang on a chair, and took down a big dinner bell from the shelf above the stove. But she didn’t ring it at the foot of the stairs to rouse her sleepy brothers—oh, no! She went out on the doorstone in the soft clear morning air, and she clanged that bell as if all Longmeadow Street were burning up.
Very quickly the three boys came scuffling in from the barn and sheds where they had been doing the first chores of the day. They washed hurriedly at the sink—so hurriedly that Aunt Martha sent Neil back to do it all over again. Then they sat down to breakfast in the shabby, homely dining room, that wasn’t a bit like the rural interiors that Jacqueline had seen on the stage and in the movies.
There were no frills about that breakfast any more than there had been about the supper. On the table was a big plate of hot raised biscuits, fluffy and light, and a platter of freshly cooked hash, meat and potatoes (more potatoes than meat!) warmed on the stove in what Aunt Martha called a “spider,” crisp and brown on the outside, soft and savory within. There was milk for the children, and coffee in a shiny tin pot for Aunt Martha and Grandma. Freddie and Annie had porridge. Aunt Martha fed Annie spoonsful with one hand, and ate her own breakfast with the other.
Both at Buena Vista and at school, fried things and hot breads had been considered unhygienic. Being forbidden, they had always seemed to Jacqueline desirable. She ate two helpings of hash and three biscuits and a half. She wanted to eat four, the same as Dickie did, but she had to give up, beaten. She could chew still, but she couldn’t swallow.
“Now you and Nellie see how nice you can clear the table and wash the dishes, and then put the dining room to rights,” said Aunt Martha, as if she asked the most natural thing in the world. “Grandma’ll be here to oversee. I’ve got to go down to the ten acre, and see if that Polack is on the job, or just getting over the christening party they had last night at the Corners.”
Aunt Martha tied on a straw hat, nodded to her family, and went her competent way. The boys went, too, quite like men of business. In these days of high wages, when Polish farm-hands expected fifty cents an hour, you either let your youngsters work in the fields, or closed up shop and went “on the town,” Grandma told Jacqueline, as one who endured what could not be cured. Ralph was as good as a man on the place, she added proudly. He’d be weeding onions now until the sun got too hot. Dickie and Neil would be working in the vegetable garden, which supplied the family table and a few good paying customers on Longmeadow Street.