Three quarters of an hour later young Tom Lockwood came to the manse door and rang the bell. Black paused, halfway between stove and pantry, then turned back to the stove, because his sense of smell told him unmistakably that something fatally wrong was occurring there. He tried to diagnose the case in a hurry, failed, and hastened unwillingly through the house to the door, wondering just how flushed and upset he looked. He felt both to an extreme degree. Absolutely nothing seemed to be going right with that breakfast.
Tom came in, in his customary breezy way. “Morning! Thought I’d drop in and see if you didn’t want to run up on the hills to-day, same as you said a while back, when we both had a morning to spare.” He paused, surveying his host with an observant eye. “Anything the matter, Mr. Black? Haven’t had—bad news, or anything?”
Black smiled. “Do I look as despondent as that? No, no—everything’s all right, thank you. But I’m afraid I can’t get away this morning to go with you. My housekeeper’s not very well. I——”
“Look here.” Tom eyed a black mark on the minister’s forehead, and noted the rolled-up shirt-sleeves. “You’re not—trying to get breakfast, are you? I say—I’ll bet that’s what you’re doing. If you are, let me help. I can make dandy coffee.” Suddenly he sniffed the air. “Something’s burning!”
The two ran back to the kitchen, making a race of it. Black won, his nostrils full now of a metallic odour. He dashed up to the stove where a double-boiler was protesting that its lower section had long since boiled dry and was being ruined, and hastily removed it. He gazed at it ruefully.
“She told me to look out for it,” he admitted.
“Some little cook, you are!” Tom, hands in pockets, surveyed a saucepan in which two eggs were boiling violently, fragments of white issuing from cracked shells. “Busted ’em when you put ’em in, didn’t you? How long have they been at it—or isn’t there any time limit to the way you like your eggs?”
Black snatched the saucepan off. “I think I must have put them on some twenty minutes ago. You see, the toast distracted my mind.” He set down the saucepan and hurriedly wrenched open the door of the broiler. “Oh—thunder!” he exploded. Blackened ruins were all that met the eye.
Tom leaned against a table, exploding joyously. “Want me to say it for you?” he offered.
“Thanks.” Black’s jaw was now set grimly. “I wonder if there’s any fool thing I haven’t done—or failed to do. Anyhow, the coffee——”