“Caramba! No. Your hair is the prettiest thing about you, except your eyes, and maybe—”
“Stuff! who cares for pretty? If I had to twist my hair up in rags every night, like you do, dear Suzan´, I’d be mis’able. But I s’pose you can’t help it. You’re grown up. It must be dreadful to get grown up, and as old as you are, poor, nice Suzan´!”
“Si? Humph! And me only twenty-five my last birthday. If it was Ellen, now—”
“Never mind Ellen. And I love you, dear Suzan´, if you are old; and I’m sorry ever’ time I’m fidgety ’bout my hair. You won’t ’member it against me, will you, after I’m gone? ’Cause I don’t mean any badness; it’s only this quick temper and can’t-keep-stillness of mine. I just want to run, run, or something, all the time. And keeping tidy, like my father says, is a bother. There! you’ve done, haven’t you? Can I go? Kiss me, Suzan´!”
Away danced Steenie, leaving her kind attendant feeling already heavy-hearted in anticipation of the time when there would be no restless little creature for her fond fingers to attire, and no little outbursts of impatience to correct.
But presently, all other thoughts save those connected with the immediate affairs of the day were banished by the tasks which Suzan´ found to do. There were chickens to roast, cakes to bake, biscuits by the hundred to be made, and pies—such rows of pies! that the arms of cook Ellen and her assistants, Win Sing and Lun Hoy, ached with the rolling of pastry.
But they were not dismayed. Not they! Didn’t they always cook just as much when the sheep were sheared, or the feast after the “roundup” was held? A pity if Santa Felisa couldn’t respond to any demand made upon her larder,—especially by order of her owner, a real live British lord!
So the great ovens were fired, both in the house-kitchen and in the old adobe cooking-sheds outside; and a corps of white-aproned helpers attended the roasting and stewing and baking of all the good things which Mistress Ellen and her aids prepared. While under the eucalyptus-trees bordering the arroyo, Suzan´ gayly directed the spreading of the long tables that would seat, if need be, full two hundred guests.
“Oh, isn’t it fun!” cried Steenie, darting about from one point to another of the gay and busy scene; and always having in tow the perspiring Lord Plunkett, who found no breath left for even his short sentences, but contented himself by beaming graciously upon each and every one he met.
“Tug an’ a canawl-boat!” said Bob, regarding the pair somewhat jealously. “Don’t see why the Little Un need stick to him so closet, even if he is a bloated lord!”