The kitchen was a pleasant place, newly painted and whitewashed, and a row of highly flourishing pink and white geraniums garnished the long low window. Really, a very nice kitchen, its mistress mused happily.
When she had whipped the eggs enough, she set the table, spreading a lace teacloth on one end of it, and reaching down a plate and a cup and saucer from the rack. She was smiling now, for there was to her gentle spirit of adventure something rather romantic in this solitary, very late meal.
"I do not know," she said as she set the saucepan on the ring and dropped a big bit of butter into it, "whether it is supper or breakfast."
Then a sudden idea came to her. She set the saucepan on the table and flew to the larder, whence, after a hurried search, she brought back two large fine tomatoes. She had always been extremely fond of scrambled eggs with tomatoes, but Ferdie loathed tomatoes, and Paul had inherited his distaste for them, so she had long since renounced this innocent gluttony. Now Ferdie had gone, and Paul was asleep, and there was nothing on earth to prevent her having "Spanish eggs," as she called them. She turned the savoury mess, very much peppered and salted, out on to two slices of buttered toast, and sat down with the teapot at hand, to enjoy herself.
"I will—I will tell John about this," she reflected gaily. "He'll laugh."
She had been so busy up to this, since he had told her, that she had hardly had time to think about it, but now, as she ate, she went back over their talk together. It seemed to her very wonderful that such a man should have cared for her, and her mind was full of pathetic gratitude to him for what she did not at all realise he must often have regarded as a perfect nuisance.
Here she had been, she thought, struggling along at "Happy House" with Ferdie and the children, losing her youth, and her hopes, and her looks, and there—somewhere—anywhere—had been that fine, handsome, successful man, loving her! It was most wonderful. "I hope, though," her thoughts went on as she began on her delicious hot eggs, "that he didn't mean anything by what he said about the divorce—and his always living somewhere near—us."
She had written nearly two dozen very sentimental novels, and was an adept at happy endings, but she blushed in her solitude at the thought that Barclay might possibly be contemplating for her and him anything so indecorous as in their case it would be, as such a happy ending.
"Oh, no, I am sure he didn't—but how wonderful it would be to have him for a friend. For the boys too, with his fine character and his cleverness." Oh, yes, she was going to be very proud of him, and the fragrance of the old romance would always hang over their friendship. And then suddenly she blushed hotly, and laid down her fork.