"It was Cook," exclaimed Mabel. "She said something about yokes for a custard and whites for--for----"
"Meringues, you donkey," said Jean.
Dr. Harry made the mayonnaise.
Lance Turberville cut the most shameful capers throughout. He decorated Harry with paper aprons and the cap of a chef, and stuck his eyeglass in the wrong eye while Harry worked patiently with a fork in semicircles. He was sent off with Betty and May, only to reappear later dressed out as a maid-servant. Nobody except Dr. Harry could take the mayonnaise seriously while Lance was about. At that moment the outdoor bell rang. With the inspiration born of mischief, and before any one could stop him, Lance rushed off and opened it.
Three ladies stood on the doorstep.
He showed them solemnly into the drawing-room, tripping over his skirt merely a trifle, and nearly giving Bertha, who had primly come to attend to the door, hysterics. He advanced to the smoke-room, where the mayonnaise was nearly completed.
"Mrs. and Miss Dudgeon and Miss Steven are in the drawing-room," said Lance.
CHAPTER VII
Visitors Again
By itself an occurrence like this would have been unnerving enough. Visitors on the afternoon of a party, and such visitors! But that the Leightons should all be more or less in a pickle in regard to the mayonnaise and Lance's foolery seemed to take things altogether over the barrier of ordinary life, and land everybody in a perfect fizzle. The Dudgeons must have called to see Cuthbert, who had never been down yet on these occasions when Mrs. Leighton and Mabel and Jean with perfect propriety had received them. Mabel had had her innings as the eldest of the house, but had retained an enormous reserve when speaking to Miss Dudgeon. Not so Jean, who believed in getting to know people at once. Elma and Betty had never ventured near them since that dreadful day when they all did the wrong thing at the wrong moment.