Joan nodded. "Um-humm! And lemonade," she said, "and anything else you can think of that's indigestible. Got any pickles?"
"What would a lone woman be doin' keepin' house without pickles?" replied Ellen scornfully, producing them. "And there's a batch of cinnamon rolls in the oven this minute, just as if I was expectin' you."
With a sigh of content, the girl reached down a yellow crockery bowl out of the cupboard—she was on quite intimate terms with Ellen's cupboard—and tying a gingham apron about her neck, proceeded to stir batter. It was the same crockery bowl, and perhaps the same gingham apron, in which she had stirred batter so long ago that she had been obliged to stand on a footstool in order to reach the kitchen-table. There was something substantial and fixed and unchangeable about Ellen Neal and her possessions, something that spelled home, though it was only home for other people.
"But you haven't distracted my mind," said Joan judicially, "from the fact that a young man of your acquaintance calls you 'Mrs.' without correction. You haven't eloped or anything lately?"
Ellen Neal bridled. "How you do go on, Joan! It makes it look better for a lone woman to be livin' by herself if she's called 'Mrs.' Men ain't so apt to get fresh with her."
"No?" murmured Joan. She gazed at Ellen's gaunt unloveliness with twinkling eyes. "Don't tell me men have been getting fresh with you, Nellen!"
The other's jaw snapped. "They have not, and they better not try it."
"Don't you think it's rather a risk darning their socks, then?" murmured the girl wickedly. "It might give them false ideas."
"I only do it for one of 'em, and he pays me good. Anything's proper so long as you get paid for it."
Joan laughed aloud. "Why, Mrs. Neal, Mrs. Neal, you shock me! What a perilous idea!"