Over the cook’s face there crept an expression of terror and pity. To console her, Ethel complimented her cookery, but the smile had vanished from the good woman’s lips until they asked her recipe for the fritters.
“I’ll take it back to Chicago with me,” said grandma. “We’ll give a german, and we’ll have pastry just like that on the sideboard. It will be a novelty.”
Ethel, after the meal, pretended to light a cigarette, to put the men at their ease. Will picked out a cigar, and Phil, who patterned himself after Miss Rowrer, took a whiff at a cigarette and threw it away. Then he picked up his banjo.
“Play us the ‘Arkansaw Traveler’!” grandma asked. “The very turn of the tune makes me wish to dance.”
Ethel spoke up: “What if we should map out our time for the two months we are to spend here? We have, first, the invitation from the countess and her friends—there are a rallye-paper and a chasse à courre.”
“The hunt is much later—a few days before we leave for Morgania,” observed Will.
“The good duke!” said Ethel; “it seems things are not going at all well in his country. Who knows? By the time we get to Morgania there may be neither duke nor duchy!”
“I’d rather be a trapper in the far West than a duke in such a country,” said grandma.
“As for me,” said Phil, stopping short the “Arkansaw Traveler,” which he had been strumming lightly, “my picture is already there and I must put it up and retouch it on the spot. I shall go, whatever happens.”
“Bravo!” Ethel answered. “‘Whatever happens’! That’s talking! One ought to know what one has to do, and then do it, whatever happens! But that has nothing to do with our camp,” she went on, as she poured out a lemon squash. We must see the Grojeans. I do hope dear Yvonne will come and sketch with me; and we must visit the country fair,—they tell me it is very curious. And then there will be our excursions, and photographs for our albums; and I must take a good deal of exercise. There are so many things to see that we shall have no time to bore ourselves.”