The day after Mary Hooper’s ill-timed call Betty had delivered an ultimatum: “You’ve either got to tend up to things or leave them alone. Hereafter, when I’m busy in the kitchen I can’t stop, no matter what happens. Just tell people the truth, please.”
It was trying that the first thing to happen should have been an invitation to go automobiling by moonlight; and missing the second—an impromptu tally-ho party, with a corn-roast and a barn-dance to follow—would have plunged Betty into the depths of woe if she had not sternly resolved to “smile and smile and go on cooking,” as Katherine had picturesquely advised her, no matter what happened. It was worth the cost too, when father called her into the library to tell her, in confidence, that he was proud of her, and that she was setting Will a splendid example.
Will was finding Cousin Joe quite as trying as he had been led to expect, and as he had gone through life hitherto on the easy theory that it is foolish to put yourself out much, because the people who expect the most of you are always cranks, nobody had thought that he would stay long with Cousin Joe, who was certainly an ideal instance of the theory. But though he came home every evening tired and discouraged, and grumbled a good deal about Cousin Joe’s unfairness and silly notions, he refused to give up his position.
“I’m no quitter. I can stick it out if the girls can,” he announced doggedly, and on his very first pay-day he bought Betty a cook-book inscribed “With deep respect, from a sympathetic fellow laborer,” which meant a great deal from reserved, undemonstrative Will.
Betty suspected that Will’s admiration was at the bottom of her mother’s tacit consent to her keeping on as cook. They had never discussed the matter after the first interview, but Mrs. Wales had gradually stopped visiting agencies and looking up advertisements, and Betty was beginning to feel that she was accepted as “permanent.” And now some bad fairy had put it into her head to see how much she had saved father, and all she could see was five dollars and sixty-four cents!
But that didn’t prevent the birthday dinner from being a great success. Three weeks’ experience had wrought a wonderful change in the new cook’s methods. Not only did she “tend up” to the business in hand, herself, but she could plan work for Maggie, and she was no longer too proud to call on mother or Dorothy for help if she needed it. So things went smoothly, not by happy accident, as things had always had a fashion of doing for Betty Wales, but because she had planned them to go that way. The cream soup did not curdle, the roast came on hot and done just as mother liked it at one end and as father liked it in the middle. The salad was crisp and deliciously flavored. The pineapple ice was not salty, and if the maple frosting was a little inclined to drip off the edges of the birthday cake, that was due, as Will pompously explained, to “the extreme age of the distinguished person whose semi-centennial we celebrate, and to the consequent over-heating of his cake by fifty burning candles.”
After dinner they went into the library to taste a wonderful cereal coffee, which Betty felt sure father would like just as well as the real thing that he mustn’t drink.
“Let me see, Betty,” said Will sipping his share reflectively. “This is the sixth near-coffee that glib-tongued salesmen have palmed off on you in three weeks.”
“It’s only the fifth,” returned Betty indignantly, “and besides they were all free samples.”
“In that case suppose you see if you can’t discover some more brands before we settle on one for family use,” suggested father gaily.