“Yes, he did,” replied Ramon, as he obediently walked into the living room after having divested himself of his overcoat and hat. “Say, Miss Betty, we had such a wonderful dinner that you surely won’t do much for supper, will you? I feel as if it’s an imposition for me to come back, and yet,—”
“And yet what would be the use of going home and then coming right back to a party?” finished Betty.
“Well, that was it, of course; and then it is so homelike here and so different from what I have all the time.”
“Do you really like it, then?” asked Betty, pleased.
“Who could help it? And now why couldn’t I help be chef? It would be what you call fun. I could tell you of so many things that I have done since I came to your country, and I earned my meals one time in a restaurant. I do not always tell that to the boys and girls, for they do not understand, and yet my people in Spain and Hungary and Poland are of the best.”
“Father thinks it is what you are, inside, that makes you,” said Betty, nodding a determined little head. They were still standing just within the living room door.
“Oh, your father! He is a big man! I fix his car at the garage where I work after school, and before school, too. And he forgot to tell your sweet mother and yet she made me welcome.” Ramon was smiling in amusement as well as appreciation.
“Oh, could you tell that?” Betty chuckled. “Mother thought that she had successfully concealed her surprise. But she was glad to have you come, you understand that, don’t you?”
“Yes, and all of you helped.”
“Well, now let’s see, Ramon. Come on into the kitchen and help me decide what we want. We’ve got a lot of that salad fixed and if you will crack a few more English walnuts we’ll fix a pretty big glass bowl of it and pass it instead of putting salad around at each place. Nobody could finish his salad at dinner time. And I’ll put on the lunch cloth or what-you-call-it–and you can set down all that fruit and the bowl of nuts on the buffet. My, imagine me bossing the gr-reat football hero of Lyon High, and a senior at that!”