“I know what I wish,” said Roger Barnes, looking back from the dining-room doorway at young Mrs. Robeson; “I wish that when the dishes are all ready you would let me know. I should like nothing better than to have a dish-towel at them. I know all about it—my mother taught me how.”
He looked so precisely as if he meant it, and the glance he sent past Juliet at Rachel Redding was so suggestive of his dislike to be separated for the coming hour from the feminine portion of the household, that his hostess answered promptly: “Of course you may. We never refuse an offer like that. We will try you—on promise of good behaviour.”
XII.—The Bachelor Begs a Dish-Towel
When the door closed on the three Juliet produced from somewhere two aprons—attractive affairs on the pinafore order—one of which she slipped upon Rachel, the other donned herself.
“These are my kitchen party-aprons,” she said gayly, noting how the pretty garment became the girl, “calculated to impress the masculine mind with the charm of domesticity in women. The doctor needs a little illustrated lesson of the sort. Life in boarding-houses isn’t adapted to encourage a man in the belief that real comfort is to be found anywhere outside of a bachelor’s club.”
Before he was called the doctor forsook a half-smoked cigar and the seductive hollows of Anthony’s easiest chair and marched briskly out to the kitchen.
“You see I distrust you,” he announced, putting in his head at the door. “I’m afraid you will get them all done without me.”
“Not a bit of it. Here you are,” and Juliet tied a big white apron about a large-sized waist. “Here’s your towel. No, don’t touch the glass; a man is too unconscious of his strength.”