“I bet I know more about cooking than you do, this minute,” he said, laughing at her. “Why do you put your flour for a cream sauce into the butter and cook it before you add the milk?”
“I don’t,” she said, astonished. “I heat my milk and mix my flour with a little cold water and....”
“Well, you’re wrong,” he said authoritatively. “That’s not the best way. The flour isn’t thoroughly cooked. Fat can be heated many degrees hotter than water.”
Mattie Farnham felt herself sinking deeper and deeper into a stupid bewilderment. Was it really Lester Knapp with whom she sat discussing recipes? She had come over to sympathize and condole with him. However in the living world had she been switched off to cream sauce? She got up, shook herself and took a step or two around the room.
“Don’t go looking to see if the furniture is dusted or the floor polished,” said Lester calmly. “We concentrate on the important things in our house and let the non-essentials go.”
“I wasn’t thinking about dust!” she told him, exasperated (although she had been). And then, struck by a sudden thought, “Where’s Stephen?”
“Out in his sandpile.”
“Why, I thought he ran away if he was left out of anybody’s sight for a minute. I thought you didn’t dare let him be by himself for....”
“Oh, Stevie’s all right,” said Lester carelessly; “he’s coming along like a house afire.”
He wheeled himself to the door, opened it and rolled his chair out on the porch. A blue-denimed little figure rose up from the other end and showed a tousled head, bright dark eyes and a round dirty face with a calm expression. “I got my tunnel fixed,” he announced.