Ice may be cold stuff, but it is heating to chop. Three minutes may freeze a pudding in some freezers, but not in ours. As much time wore away, I gradually hitched my chair in a backward direction, to permit a stealthy glance at Margaret on the back piazza. It is almost as wearing to hold our freezer down as it is to turn the crank. Margaret was doing both at once, stopping frequently to chase a slippery chunk of ice about with her pick, chivying the bits of ice and salt finally into a cup. Her cheeks had become flushed a vivid freight-car color. It was with great relief that I finally saw her peer into the freezer, remove the dasher, and proceed to seal up her confection and cover it with newspapers and an astrakhan cape.
The precise moment when a water-ice becomes simple is when it is smoothly slipped into a long-stemmed sherbet glass. Our guests, we think, enjoyed our simple meal. But after they had gone, the word which exactly described our state of mind was not the word nonchalant.
“Barbara!” said Margaret energetically, “for supper, let's open a box of blueberries.”
We did. Blueberries really are simple. We made our evening meal of them, accompanied by a few left-over popover skins.
Margaret and I still feel that we could deal somewhat hopefully with a leaking pipe. We still think that our calamities were a little out of the ordinary. But we do not wonder quite so much now that Mother does not wholly appreciate her dinner when she has guests, that she does not oftener make simple frozen desserts, or that she stays in such close company with her wheels when they are on their way around.
THE WILL TO BOSS
There are people who have a right to boss;—parents, for instance, and generals in the army. With these we are not concerned. But most of us, not officially in authority, now and then have ideas of our own that we are willing to pass on. Some of us have them more than others.
The typical boss is usually a capable executive with a great unselfish imagination and the gift of speech. He usually knows enough to curb himself in public; it is only in the home that his tendencies run riot. In a family where all the brothers and sisters belong to this type, you can run riot only to a certain extent. If you go too far, you meet somebody else also running riot, and collisions ensue.
If you are an elder sister, for instance, with a tendency toward what your younger brothers call “getting bossy,” you find yourself constantly having vivid mental pictures of the best way to do a given thing. With these fancy-pictures in mind, it is hard for you to believe that your companions have any ideas at all. As you look at another person from the outside, you find it hard to believe that his head is working. If our heads were only made like these ovens with glass in the door, so that you could watch the half-baked thinking rise and fall—but no. Your brother sitting carelessly on the veranda may have his mind on the time; he may be planning just how he will presently rush to his room, bathe and change, snatch his hat, run to the station, and connect with the train on daylight-saving time. He may be thinking hard about all this, but he does not look as if he were. You fidget while the minutes go by, and then you go to the window and speak. If your spirit has been broken by much browbeating for past attempts to give advice, you speak timidly. If you are of stouter stuff, you speak roughly to your little boy.