When she was suffering from the heat of the stove, and was ready to throw up her job and return to the bright lights of Phœnix, "Red" invariably came around to the door with music on his lips, his shock of hair blown by the soft wind, looking so boyish that she had to succumb to him, boil another pot of coffee, and lay a place for him at the corner of the table.
"Be off wid yez!" she always began by saying. But the insinuating harmonica was his only reply; and she ended by begging him to come in and play for her while she messed with the pots and pans, and maybe found some batter for a plate of griddle cakes.
On this particular morning, work being useless since things were going so badly for Jones, "Red" slipped up the road and reached the kitchen door just as Mrs. Quinn was washing up.
"Oh, so there ye be, me boy!" was her motherly greeting. "Come in, an' maybe—who knows?—I'll find a cup o' coffee fer ye, though I'm not thinkin' ye deserve it."
"Red" loved the odors from this fragrant kitchen. The stove always gleamed, and when Mrs. Quinn was in good humor she was like a great light moving here and there, dispensing warmth also. She was a monstrous woman; but like many large people, she got about easily and swiftly. Her capable hands were forever fluttering in the flour-barrel or over the dough-board, and her ruddy cheeks and honest gray eyes spoke of health and good nature. She adored Angela; and she really liked "Red" tremendously, and hoped in the end he would win the difficult and fickle girl. But, like Angela, she had moment when she could have shaken him. For "Red" didn't fight hard enough for what he wanted. He was naïve to the point of stupidity at times; and women like aggressive men—even men who are capable of flogging them into submission, deny it as they will. "Red" was gentle and mild, though thoroughly manly. Both Angela and Mrs. Quinn would have liked to see him live up to his fiery hair.
He beamed now at the genial cook's greeting, and took out his harmonica, running over the full scale as a suitable answer.
"Here, sit ye down, 'Red,'" Mrs. Quinn ordered. "But first see that yer feet is wiped off. I don't want to see no dirt along me clean floor."
She was busy with a place for him near the window, happy, as most women are, to serve a handsome young chap, and secretly wishing in her heart that she had him for a son.
The coffee was miraculously brought, and soon the griddle-cakes, gloriously brown, and deftly turned by Mrs. Quinn, were in front of him.