Jack smiled at the familiar question. Aunt Love was one of those comfortable folk who are always wanting to stay people's stomachs, especially children's. She had never thought it an odd or inconvenient fact that boys are always hungry. What wonder that she was popular? Her visitor assured her that he would prefer to wait, and she hastened out to the kitchen, her brain seething with plans to prepare a meal which should deceive the visitor as to its impromptu nature.
With great celerity she tied a huge apron over her black silk gown, and went to work. Miss Berry's friends, could they have looked on, would have thought she had lost her wits; for never had she been known to pare potatoes to such a reckless depth. She exulted in her own rule never to let the kitchen fire go out, and flew hither and thither with a practiced deftness which allowed of no false move. Once she stumbled over some object and looked down impatiently. It was Blitzen.
"I thought you was under the settin'-room sofa, you rascal. If you dare to hender me to-day!" she said hotly. Blitzen knew there was danger in her voice, but the chickens were beginning to send forth an appetizing fragrance, and all his discretion could not keep him from joining in such a novel romp as his staid mistress was making of getting dinner. The consequence was that in a minute more Miss Lovina trod on his nimble toe. The yelp he gave exasperated her. She threw open the kitchen door.
"Go out!" she ordered sternly.
Blitzen rolled over on his back and lay there, limp, looking like a gigantic caterpillar. Miss Berry spoke once more in vain; then she swooped upon him in a totally unprecedented manner, and in another moment the terrier was picking himself out of a snowdrift to the tune of the slamming of the kitchen door.
Jack could see him from his window, sitting in the path, scratching the snow out of his ears, and reflecting on the mutations of this life.
CHAPTER X.
AUNT LOVE'S INTERCESSION.
When Van Tassel saw Blitzen describe an arc which had its beginning at the kitchen door and its vanishing point in a snowdrift, the spontaneous laugh which burst from him sounded strangely in his own ears. It was the first time he had laughed in such fashion since that October day when Page's cable messages had found him in Berlin.
He had been wondering, as he stood there by Miss Berry's small-paned window, whether Aunt Love's prattle on the way home from church had been for the express purpose of diverting him. He could not connect even that extent of diplomacy with this friend of two of his childhood's summers; but supposing her anecdotes to have had that purpose, they had been successful. Jack felt content to be here. The cold pure blankness of this outside world, the absence of all necessity for exertion or assumption of an interest he did not feel, were surpassingly restful.