He took the dish away from her by a dexterous little twist in which conscious strength certainly asserted itself. Rachel, laughing, with a dash of colour in cheeks which were normally of dark ivory tints, accepted the dish-towel he handed her.
“Hallo, there,” cried Wayne Carey’s voice from the door. “You’re having more fun out here than we are in there, and that’s not fair. The lord of the manor is getting so chesty over the delights of a country home in a February snowbank that he’s becoming heavy company.”
“No room for you here,” returned the doctor, removing with a flourish the last candied sugar lump from the bottom of the big dish, and beginning to swash about vigorously in the hot water. “We do something besides talk out here; we work. Our kitchen is so small we have to waste no time in steps; as we dry the things we chuck them straight into their places.”
Suiting the action to the word he caught up a shining cake-tin and cast it straight at Carey. That gentleman dodged, but Anthony caught it, performed upon it an imitation of the cymbals, then turned about and laid it in a nest of similar tins upon a shelf in an open closet.
“Ah, but I’m well trained,” he boasted.
“If you were you wouldn’t put it away wet,” observed Rachel slyly.
Anthony withdrew the tin, wiped it with much solicitude, and replaced it.
“These little technicalities are beyond me,” he apologised. “Your real athlete in kitchen work is your scientific man. See him dry that bean-pot with the glass-towel. Now, I know better than that.”
“Go away, all of you,” commanded the mistress of the place. “Go back to the fire and we’ll join you. If you are very good we’ll bring you a special treat by-and-by.”