“MILLICENT DECLARED SHE LOOKED LIKE TWEEDLEDEE PREPARED FOR HIS FIGHT WITH TWEEDLEDUM.”
CHAPTER IV
THE “WHITECAP”
AGAIN Marjorie rapped on the table with her iron spoon.
“As none of you seems to offer any suggestions,” she went on, as if she had not been interrupted at all, “I will lay down the law. Hester, you’re Stoker. The coal and wood has come. Now see if you can make a fire that shall be worthy of one whom England expects this day to do her duty!”
“Aye, aye!” said Hester, bringing her hand to her temple, palm forward, with the quick, jerky salute of a British marine.
“Helen, you and Jessie might set the table; but don’t both of you get to singing at once, for you’ll drive us distracted. Millicent, what are you good for, anyway?”
Millicent was putting away the groceries that were piled on the table in the outer kitchen, or buttery, as Hester called it, and she replied: “Oh, I would ornament any calling; but when I see these candles and kerosene it makes me just long to fill the lamps and candlesticks, ’cause it’s going to get dark pretty soon.”
“You’re a wise virgin,” said Betty, “and you shall be our honored Lamplighter. I suppose I must peel these potatoes. How many, Duchess?”
“Two apiece,” replied Marjorie. “We’ll have them mashed, and the onions fried, and the steak broiled, and I’ll make coffee, and that’s all we’ll have cooked for supper. You can hunt up some dessert out of the things that came from the grocer’s.”