“I am sure it was an improvement on the original. It couldn’t be worse. Do get your hat and come along. I told my old butler not to have luncheon until half-past one. Do you mind walking?”
“I’d love a walk. Just a moment.”
CHAPTER VIII
Gita, now that she was in command, had her meals served in the breakfast-room, as nothing could make cheerful, in the daytime at least, a long high room paneled to the ceiling, whose windows looked directly into somber pine woods. This little room, facing the garden, was bright and cheerful as the girls sat at lunch. It was a meal to satisfy the appetite rather than caress the palate, for Mrs. Carteret, during the last year of her life, had lived on broths, gruels, eggs, and milk, and the cook had “got her hand out,” as she informed her new mistress somewhat apprehensively: it had been an easy place and to the grumbling of nurses she had been haughtily indifferent. Gita, who had a European palate for flavors, had no intention of keeping her and asked Mrs. Brewster if she knew of a good cook.
“I can’t afford a chef, of course,” she said, “and I don’t know enough to train anyone, although I cooked for my mother and myself for a time in San Francisco. But I hate the sight of a kitchen and my accomplishments in that line were limited to meat and vegetables, generally overdone. But I should be able to get a fairly decent cook for what I pay this moron.”
“I know just the thing.” Elsie Brewster was delighted to be of service to this girl whom she liked more every moment and was anxious to study. “That is to say if your Topper would stand for it. The woman is colored.”
“Topper’s opinion will not be asked,” said Gita coolly. “He will suit his tastes to mine or leave. I have no sentiment about old servants, and I am sure he must have saved a lot, to say nothing of my grandmother’s legacy. I’ll make him a present of the discarded furniture and he can set up another boarding-house in Atlantic City! Send your darky along. I’m enormously obliged.”
“Oh, do keep Topper!” cried Elsie. “What would an old manor be without an aged butler? He’s an indispensable part of the tradition.”
“Well, he can’t live forever,” said Gita practically. “And I think the less you bother about traditions the better you get along. Old servants think they own you, anyhow, and there’ll be only one master in this house.”
“I don’t fancy he owned your grandmother. I used to see her sometimes when I went to the Episcopal church with a friend, and thought her quite the most imperious person I had ever seen. You looked just like her when you said that.”