“Yes, Ephraim, they are, and I am. I’m so stirred up I don’t know whether I’ve beat these eggs all one way, like I ought, or forty-’leven different ones, like I ought not. I’m flustered. I’m completely flustered, and that ain’t often my case.”
“Picra!” sympathetically suggested the old man.
Aunt Sally’s eyes snapped, and she smiled grimly, as she retorted:
“Picra’s good for them ’at need it. That’s you, not me. It ain’t a medicine for in’ards so much as ’tis for out’ards. I mean, it’s better for the body than ’tis for the mind, and it’s my mind that’s ailin’ me! Besides, doctors never take their own doses.”
“You know it yourself! I thought your mind was failing you, but–––”
“No such thing. I said, or I meant to say, I was troubled in it. That’s all; and if you’re a mite of a man you’ll try and help me unravel this tangle and quit foolin’. Just step into that closet with me and maybe the tackers’ll tell you themselves. I’d rather you heard it first hand, anyway.”
Wun Lung, sifting flour in one part of the kitchen, and Pasqual scrubbing a kneading board at the sink, both paused and eyed the strange proceedings with curiosity if not displeasure; for not only had the children been bestowed within the “cold closet,” but Aunt Sally and Ephraim had, also, followed and locked themselves out of sight and hearing.
The pantry was absolutely dark, until Mrs. Benton found a candle and lighted it; then she pointed to the chair she had occupied during the night, mutely inviting “Forty-niner” to be seated. He declined the proffered courtesy, so she sat down herself, and it amused him that she had not once stopped that monotonous whisking of the eggs, though by this time the dish was heaped with their frothy substance.
“The cake you make of them should be light enough,” he remarked, with a smile.