To the amazement of the irate woman, Jenny clapped her hands girlishly and then, skipping forward, gave Miss O’Hara an impulsive hug as she cried: “Oh, oh, I’m so glad you feel that way about it! Then you won’t mind so terribly because Etta Heldt is gone—gone for good, I mean?”
Miss O’Hara stared blankly. “Gone?” she repeated. “Where’s she gone to?”
Jenny glanced at the clock. It was nearing noon and she knew that the cook had little time for idle visiting, and so she said briskly: “I’ve come over to help. I’ll put on Etta’s apron and do anything you want done, and while we’re working, I’ll tell you the whole sad story, because, Miss O’Hara, it is awfully sad, and I do believe if you had known it, you would have been sorrier for Etta, and maybe, a little more patient.” Then, fearing that this might offend her listener, the tactful girl hurried on with: “I know how kind you can be. No one knows better.”
The cook, who had turned back to the slicing of cold meat, which had been the reason for the carving knife, merely grunted at this. She was not sure but that a little of her own native blarney was being applied to her. But she answered in a pleasanter voice to the girl’s repeated inquiry: “What shall I do to help?”
“Well, you might be fixin’ the salad. You’ll find the mixin’s for it all in the icebox up top.”
“Oh, goodie!” Jenny skipped to the box as she spoke: “I adore making things pretty, and salads give one a chance more than most anything else, don’t you think so, Miss O’Hara?” She had lifted the cover and was peering in where, close to the ice, lay the cheesecloth bag of crisped lettuce and a bowl of tiny cooked beets. These she carried to the long white table as she asked: “May I prepare it just as I want to, Miss O’Hara, or have you some special way of doing it?”
“Fix it to suit yourself,” was the ungrudgingly given response. “You’ll find all sort of bowls for it in the pantry, you’ll need four, there being four tables.”
Jenny chose pretty glass bowls and set about making as artistic a salad as she could, and, while she worked, she told the whole story to a listener who at first was merely curious, but who gradually became interested and finally sympathetic. “Well, I sure certain wish I’d known about her comin’ to this country and findin’ her mother dead. Like as not I’d have tried some to cheer her up. As I look back on it now, I wasn’t any too patient with her. It’ll be a lesson to me, that’s what it will. When the next orphan comes to this kitchen, I’ll try to make it as home-like for her as I can.” Then the cook recalled her own troubles. “How-some-ever, I wish Etta Heldt had given me notice. Here I’ll be without a helper for no one knows how long, a week maybe.”
Jenny, having heaped a glass bowl with a most appetizing salad, stepped back to admire it. Then she revealed her plan. “Miss O’Hara, if you’ll let me, I’ll come right over after school every day and do Etta’s work until you can get another helper.”
Miss O’Hara again turned, another knife in her hand, as she had been cutting bread. “Jenny Warner, are you meaning that? Will you help out for a few days? Well, the Saints bless the purty face of you as they’ve done already. I only wish I could have a helper all the time as cheery as you are. I could get on with after-school help. I’m thinkin’, on a scratch.”