Come with us.”
Carmelita, who had appeared in the kitchen door, started chattering in Spanish and Jerry laughingly translated, rather freely, and not quite as the truly deferential cook had intended. “Carmelita asks me to tell you girls that she has reheated your breakfast for the last time and that if you don’t come in now and eat it, she’s going to give it to the cat.”
“Oho!” Mary pointed an accusing finger at him. “I know you are making it up. Carmelita wouldn’t have said that, because there is no cat.” Then graciously, she added, “Won’t you singing cowboys come in and have a cup of coffee, if there is any?”
Jerry asked Carmelita if there was enough of a snack for two starved cowboys who had breakfasted at daybreak and that good-natured Mexican woman declared that there was batter enough to make stacks more cakes if Jerry wanted to fry them. She had butter to churn down in the cooling cellar.
Mary insisted that she be the one to fry the cakes, but Jerry and Dick insisted equally, that she should not, dressed up like a Japanese princess.
“Grease spatters wouldn’t look well tangled up in that gold vine,” Jerry told her.
With skill and despatch, Jerry flipped cakes and Dick served them. Then, while the girls went upstairs to don their hiking suits with the short divided skirts, the boys ate small mountains of the cakes.
“Verse five!” Dick mumbled with his mouth full.
“Two cowboys with a big appetite
They could eat flapjacks all day and all night.