While Cornelia went to the door, Mazie transformed the kitchen as if by magic. She wafted a heap of soiled dishes into a basin in the cupboard, deftly concealed the stove behind a Japanese screen, and then converted the washtubs into a table by covering them with a pretty denim cloth. Tubs, in a sitting-room, offended her sense of propriety, even when they were porcelain tubs, as these were, with fine zinc tops. But the denim cover blotted out iniquity, on the principle that what the eye can't see, the heart don't grieve! Fortunately. For the limitations of a three-room apartment left no choice but to employ the one fair-sized room in the triple capacity of kitchen, dining-room and sitting-room.
Tapping her dainty hands against each other to brush away the dust, Mazie faced the newcomer, a young man about Claude's age.
"Why, it's only Rob!" she exclaimed.
"By which Mazie means to say, Cato, that we trembled for fear you were Hutchins Burley."
"Do you expect him?" asked Robert, turning to Cornelia.
"Burley's going to take me to supper."
"That man foils me at every turn," said Robert with mock gravity. "I wanted to take you to supper myself. Cornelia, you have no intuition whatever."
"Well, how do you do!"
Cornelia had a whimsical way of using this salutation as a mild rebuke.
Mazie, who was perched on the quondam tubs so that Claude could get the full benefit of a very shapely pair of legs, made a grimace at Robert Lloyd.