Instead of going to her room, Eve took a seat at the window; she was anxious about the judge.
“Miss Polly’s cakes are always so light,” pursued Cousin Sarah Cray, looking at them; “she never makes a mistake, there’s never the tinetiest streak of heaviness in her little pounds! And her breads are elegant, too; when one sees her beautiful hands, one wonders how she can do all the kneading.”
“Does she do it herself?”
“Every single bit; their old Susannah only heats the oven. It was a courageous idea, Miss Bruce, from the beginning; you know they are among our best people, and, after the war, they found themselves left with nothing in the world but their house. They could have kept school in it, of course, for they are accomplished beyond everything; Miss Leontine paints sweetly—she was educated in France. But there was no one to come to the school; the girls, of course, could not afford to go away.”
“You mean pupils?—to leave their homes and come here?”
“No, I mean the girls, Polly and Leontine; they could not open a school anywhere else—in Charleston, for instance; they had not money enough.”
“I beg your pardon—it was only that I did not recognize them as ‘the girls.’”
“Well, I suppose they really are not quite girls any longer,” responded Cousin Sarah Cray, thoughtfully. “Polly is forty-four and Leontine fifty-two; but I reckon they will always be ‘the girls’ to us, even if they’re eighty,” she added, laughing. “Well, Polly had this idea. And she has been so successful—you can’t think! Her bread-cart goes over to Mellons every day of your life, as regularly as the clock. And they buy a great deal.”
“It’s the camp, isn’t it?—Camp Mellons?”
“No; it has always been Mellons, Mellons Post-office. The camp is near there, and it has some Yankee name or other, I believe; but of course you know, my dear, that we never go there.”