On Monday morning Geraldine awoke with a new resolve. Never again would she be put in the embarrassing position of not being able to do anything really useful when the “S. S. C.” got up a dinner, and not for worlds would she have Jack Lee know that she had considered cooking menial: an accomplishment far beneath her. His ideas and ideals were very different from those she had acquired at the fashionable seminary in Dorchester.
When the girl went down to breakfast, she found that the Colonel and Alfred had gone early to town. Mrs. Gray was waiting for her, sitting in the sunny bow window reading the morning paper. “Oh, here you are, dearie.” She rose briskly as she added, “I’ll have to go down to the kitchen to get the things I’ve been keeping warm for us.”
Geraldine looked surprised. “But why doesn’t Sing send them up on the lift?” she asked.
Mrs. Gray, at once sober, shook her head as she said: “Poor Sing! It seems that he went to Dorchester to the Chinese quarters yesterday to see a sick friend, and while there the place was quarantined for smallpox and he will have to remain away at least two weeks.”
“Oh, Mrs. Gray, whatever shall we do? How can you do all the housekeeping and—the cooking as well.”
The old lady smiled at the girl lovingly. “Do you know, Geraldine,” she began, “I sort of thought that perhaps you would like to help me. Now that you can make a bed the way Merry Lee taught you, if you would make the Colonel’s and Alfred’s——”
“Of course I can, and will!” was the almost unexpected rejoinder. “And better than that,” the girl flashed a bright smile at the old lady, “I’m glad Sing is going to be away for two weeks, because that will give us a chance to use the kitchen all we want to, won’t it Mrs. Gray?”
“Use the kitchen, Geraldine?” The old lady could hardly believe that she had heard aright. “I thought I once heard you say that you hoped you would never have to step inside of a kitchen.”
The girl flushed, but she answered frankly: “You are right, I did! But yesterday, when I saw those girls, all of them from nice families, cooking such a very good meal, I felt sorry. Oh, more than that. I was actually ashamed when Jack Lee asked me which of the dishes I had prepared, and if someone hadn’t changed the subject, I would have felt terribly humiliated to have had to confess that I couldn’t cook at all.”
A ray of light was penetrating the darkness for Mrs. Gray. Briskly she replied: “I shall enjoy teaching you to cook, dearie, as I would a granddaughter of my own.” Then Geraldine further surprised the old lady by leading her to her seat and declaring that she would go down to the kitchen and bring up the breakfast.