“What a strange man you are, Mr. Kalisch,” exclaimed Miss Campbell. “You seem to read people’s minds like open books.”
“No, no,” he answered. “Don’t attach any such brilliant qualities to me. With a little practice in observing and talking to people, any one may guess their tastes and inclinations. It was only by the merest accident that I found out what poor Marie-Jeanne has been wishing for all her life.”
“But what is it?” interrupted Miss Helen.
“It’s a secret, but I’ll tell you. She wants to cook.”
“To cook?”
“Certainly. She has lived a wandering life in cheap hotels and boarding houses always with her mother, and she wants a home with a kitchen in it. She told me so herself. She wants to make the dishes her father loved,—vegetable soup and bread pudding and gingerbread.”
“Good heavens,” cried Miss Campbell wiping the moisture from her eyes, “I should never have thought so from glancing at that unhappy, gaudily dressed girl. What a world! What a world!”
“When Marie-Jeanne, whose name I suspect was once Mary-Jane, becomes a cook,” said the man, “her world will be set to rights.”
“And what do you make of the little boy?” asked Miss Campbell.
Telemac shook his head.