"Including cooking," she said, with a wan attempt at raillery, remembering Brother Bates' gossip.
"Including cooking," he admitted gravely. "Wait until this coffee has boiled, and you shall see that I know one branch, at least, of my profession thoroughly."
He brought her a steaming cup in a moment, which she drained gratefully. "It's heavenly! May I have some more? Where did you learn to cook—from books?"
"From necessity. When I first came to the mountains, it seemed safer to cook than to be cooked for."
The girl was paying little attention. She watched Channing fearfully. He was still unconscious, livid; but the school-teacher appeared to feel no alarm. He went deftly and quite unhurried about his preparations, getting out a hypodermic syringe, a bottle of chloroform, placing certain instruments in the oven, others in boiling water.
Jacqueline shivered; but she went on with the conversation gallantly, striving to face the situation as her mother or Jemima would have faced it.
"I know one other man who can cook, but he's a minister, and they're always different, somehow. He learned in the mountains, too, by the way, because there was nobody but himself and his father to take care of his sick mother. He learned all sorts of things to help her ... how to sew on buttons, and mend clothes, and sweep—He can even darn stockings! And he's not a bit ashamed of it."
"I should think," murmured the other, "that he might be even proud of it. You find him unmanly, perhaps?"
"Unmanly! Philip?" The tone of her voice answered him. "Why, he's the manliest man I know!"
The teacher said nothing further; but she got the impression that he was listening, waiting for her to go on.