CHAPTER III
THAT TEA-ROOM AGAIN
Betty Wales, arrayed in her cook’s regalia, sat by the kitchen table, one eye on the range, the other on the fly-leaf of the new cook-book that Will had given her. It was scribbled full of figures, which Betty added and subtracted and multiplied laboriously, with sighs and incredulous stares at the distinctly unpleasant results.
“Three weeks’ hard work, and so far as I can see I’ve saved the family exactly five dollars and sixty-four cents. And that Vermont maple sugar is boiling over again!” Betty made a dive for the saucepan in which she was cooking maple frosting for father’s birthday cake. “If it tastes burned, what’s left of it, I shall just give up!” she declared plaintively.
“Oh, Betty dear!” Dorothy’s shrill voice and pattering footsteps sounded down the hall. “You aren’t forgetting the kitten’s birthday, are you?”
“Of course not,” Betty assured her, tasting the frosting critically. “She’s to have oysters and whipped cream. By and by you can whip the cream, dearie, but it’s too soon now, and I’m very busy, so you’d better run and find mother.”
“All right. I’m busy too. I’ve got to tie on my kitten’s new neck-bow, and she wiggles so that it’s awfully hard work. And then I’m going to give her her box of corks that I bought for her.”
Betty tasted the frosting again, decided that it was done, put it away to cool, and went back to her figures.
“Burned steak, two dollars,” she murmured; “salty ice-cream, a dollar and twenty cents; boiled-over coffee, thirty cents. I don’t believe I’ve forgotten anything important that I spoiled.” Then her smile flashed out suddenly. “But real cooks spoil things—why, of course they do! Not so many, maybe, but some.” She began stirring the frosting vigorously. “You always hear that figures lie. I suppose the reason is because it’s so hard to put down all about real cooks and other real things in figures. Anyway, I’ve tried to help hard enough. After this I shall always be sorry for cooks. I suppose there may be worse ways of earning your living, but I shouldn’t want to try them.”
“Here’s a letter for you, Betty!” The smallest sister was back again, having evidently intercepted the postman. “And the kitten has got a post-card that says ‘Birthday greetings.’ Isn’t it pretty? My chum at school sent it to her.”
Betty declared hastily that the kitten’s post-card was perfectly lovely, and asked Dorothy to put her letter, with the address in Madeline’s fascinating scrawling hand, and a foreign stamp, into the table drawer; for the cook’s fingers were sticky, the frosting obstinately refused to thicken, and dinner-time was approaching with alarming rapidity.