“When you’re mad,” finished Joey adroitly.
I shoved the stove lid into place beneath the hot griddle, and motioned to Joey to bring the yellow pitcher. While I poured out the foamy batter, Joey kept silence, watching the sizzling process with fascinated eyes, but when I took the pancake-turner in hand and opened the window to let the smoke escape, he spoke again:
“It’s bad for her, ain’t it, having a name like that?”
“It isn’t her real name, Joey. It’s a name I bestowed upon her. It seemed to belong to her someway. We shall never see her again, so it does not matter.”
“We’ll see her again, Mr. David, if she buys Russell’s old ranch.”
I paused midway to the table, the cake-turner heaped with steaming cakes in my hand. I stared at Joey. Curiously I’d forgotten the possibility of Haidee becoming my neighbor. My wrist trembled, the cakes slipped to the floor. Joey pounced upon them, bore them to the sink and rinsed them painstakingly in the pail of fresh spring water.
“I like cold cakes,” he was saying manfully, when I awoke to the situation.
“So does the collie. No, no, lad—we may not be living in affluence, but we don’t have to economize on corn cakes.” I laughed boisterously and patted his shoulder. “My cedar chests are selling, and my book—my nature story—is almost completed—why, soon we shall be turning up our noses at flapjacks!”
“At flapjacks!” Joey cried incredulously, making a dash for the yellow pitcher.
We were half through breakfast before he spoke again, and then he ventured tentatively: “Suppose she’ll come to-day?”