Poppy walked round the kitchen, looking at everything.
"You've got all the same nice old copper things you had at the farm, haven't you, Kykie? But it is a much bigger kitchen. Which table will you let me have to mix the salads on?"
Kykie's face became ornamented with scowls.
"My salads are as good as anyone's," she asserted.
"Nonsense! you know Luce always likes mine best. Come upstairs now and show me my room."
"Me? With the lunch to get ready!" screamed Kykie, and jumping up she ran to the stove and began to rattle the pots.
"Well, I will find it myself," said Poppy, going towards the door, "and I think you're very unkind on my first day home."
But Kykie gave no heed. As a rule she was of a sociable turn of mind and under other circumstances would have hung about Poppy, showing her everything and bombarding her with questions; but now she was in the clutches of despair and dismay at the thought of her neglect of her adored master, Luce Abinger, and her very real fear of the storm that would surely break over her head when he arrived.
Kykie called herself a "coloured St. Helena lady," but by the fat gnarled shape of her, it is likely that she was more than half a Hottentot. Also the evidence of her hair was against her: it was crisp and woolly, instead of being lank and oily as a proper "St. Helena lady's" should be. However, she always kept it concealed beneath a spotless dook. Her real name, as she often informed Poppy in aggrieved accents, was Celia Frances Elizabeth of Teck Fortune; but Luce Abinger had brutally named her Kykie, and that was all she was ever called in his house. By way of retaliation it was her agreeable custom to address her master and Poppy Destin by their Christian names; but Luce Abinger only laughed, and Poppy didn't mind in the least. The old woman was quite ignorant and uneducated, but she had lived all her life as a servant amongst civilised people, and she spoke correct and fluent English, tacking many curious expressions of her own to the tails of her remarks with an air of intense refinement.
She was often crabbed of temper and cantankerous of tongue, but the heart within her wide and voluptuous bosom was big for Luce Abinger and all that pertained to him. She had served him during the whole of his twenty-five years of life in South Africa; and she was a very pearl of a cook.