The sun had come, and the kitchen was filled with it. The aluminium saucepans glittered like silver, and the water ran out of the tap in a rainbow spray. She laid the table in the dining room, and Bobbetty followed her back and forth, carrying the less dangerous things.
There was a wonderful perfume in the air—the intangible sweetness of spring—and with it, and no less wonderful, was the homely fragrance of coffee and oatmeal and bacon. It was a divine hour, and Bobbetty knew it. Bobbetty could share it with her—he and he alone.
He dropped a loaf of bread that he was carrying, and, moved by impulse, kicked it across the room. Mrs. Champney picked it up, without a word of reproof. She knew how Bobbetty felt.
Then she drew the chairs up to the table—and made her great discovery.
“There are four chairs!” she cried aloud. “There are four of us! Why, I’m not the third person at all!”
She was so overcome by this that she sat down, and stared before her with a dazed look.
“There were three already—I’m the fourth, and four’s such a nice number! I can’t go away and leave Robert and Molly alone together. They’ll never be alone together any more—there’s Bobbetty. I can help so much! They’re both so very, very young, and I could do so much! Molly could have time for music. There are two buttons off Bobbetty’s underwaist. Mother-in-law, indeed![Pg 281]”
She heard the percolator boiling too hard, and she got up. In the kitchen doorway she met Bobbetty with the bowwow.
“Bobbetty!” she said. “Do you know something?”
“Yes, I do!” shouted the child.