But all the same, perhaps there was more to Stephen than just his cussedness.
How cheerful Lester had seemed! It must be that his food had set better than usual to-day.
Chapter 15
SATURDAYS were great days for “the Knapp Family, Incorporated.” They were together at home all day, and always with a great variety of schemes on hand. In the morning Henry usually relapsed from his eleven-year-old dignity back into younger days and played with Stephen, especially since the sandpile settlement had been started, and since they had a brood of chickens to care for. Old Mrs. Hennessy came to give the house the weekly, thorough, cellar-to-garret cleaning which Lester had found was the best way to keep Evangeline from spending Sunday with a mop and broom. In the kitchen Helen and her father, foregathering over the cook-book, struggled fervently with cookery more ambitious than that of the usual week-day.
Helen loved these Saturday morning cooking-bees as she called them. She and Father had such a good time together. It was so funny, Father not knowing any more than she did about it all and having to study it out from the book. Lots of times she, even she, was able to give him pointers about things the cook-book didn’t tell.
For instance, at the very beginning, that historic first day, long ago, when they had first cooked together and timorously tried to have scrambled eggs for lunch, it had been Helen who conquered those bomb-like raw eggs. Lester had gingerly broken off the top of one, and was picking the shell carefully away, when Helen said informingly, “That’s not the way. Mother gives them a crack in the middle on the edge of the bowl and opens them that way.”
“How? Show me,” said her father docilely, handing her another egg. Feeling very important, Helen took it masterfully and, holding it over the edge of the bowl, lifted her hand with an imitation of Mother’s decisive gesture. But she did not bring it down. She shuddered, rolled her eyes at her father and said miserably, “Suppose I hit it too hard, and it all spurts out?”
Her father felt no impulse to cry out bitterly on her imbecile ineptitude. Rather he sympathized with her panic, “Yes, raw eggs are the dickens!” he said, understandingly.
Intimidated, they both looked at the smooth, oval enigma.
“You do it,” said Helen, with her self-distrusting impulse to shift responsibility to some one else.