The young man stretched out a hand. “I must see her. I shall get up—”
“There, there. I wouldn’t try to get up if I was you,” said Uncle William, genially. “I’ve put away your clothes, different places. I don’t jest know where they be, myself. It’ll be quite a chore to get ’em all together. You jest lie still, and let me manage.”
The young man ate his breakfast with relish. A subtle resolve to get up and do things was in his eye.
Uncle William watched it, chuckling. “Sha’n’t be able to keep him there more’n a day longer,” he said. “Better feed him well whilst I can.” He prepared clam-broth and toast, and wondered about an omelet, rolling in and out of the room with comfortable gait.
The artist ate everything that was set before him, eagerly. The resolve in his eye yielded to appreciation. “You ought to have been a chef, Uncle William. I never tasted anything better than that.” He was eating a last bit of toast, searching with his fork for stray crumbs.
Uncle William nodded. “The’ ’s a good many things I’d o’t to ’a’ been if I’d had time. That’s the trouble with livin’. You don’t hev time. You jest practise a day or two on suthin’—get kind o’ ust to it—and then you up and hev to do suthin’ else. I like cookin’ fust rate while I’m doin’ it. . . . I dunno as I should like it reg’lar, though. It’d be kind o’ fiddlin’ work, gettin’ up and makin’ omelets every mornin’.”
“You’re an artist,” said the young man.
“Mebbe. Don’t you think you’ve licked that plat about clean?” Uncle William looked at it approvingly. “It ain’t much work to wash dishes for you.”
At intervals during the day the artist demanded his clothes, each time a little more vigorously. Uncle William put him off. “I don’t see that picter of my house anywheres ’round,” he said when pressed too close.
“No.”