“Adelaide, did you bring condensed cream? And who was to bring cake—were you, Edith? Dorothy has knives and forks and a kettle.”
“Cake?” from Edith blankly. “Why, no, Marie, I brought eggs. I thought you said to—I thought we were going to fry them with the bacon.”
A howl of laughter went up, in which Edith joined in spite of herself.
“How did you think we’d do it, dear?” Mrs. Bryan asked at last, trying to straighten her face.
“That’s easy,” promised Louise cheerfully. “You just peel the eggs carefully, throw away the shell, poke the raw egg on the point of a stick, and toast it over the fire till it’s all gone.”
Edith giggled. “Well, I don’t see how you could expect me to get it straight over the ’phone, anyway. If I’d known you expected me to bring a cake—I don’t believe it was me you—ow!”
For a lurch of the car had sent the satchel in which Dorothy had the knives and forks smashing against the raw eggs they had been talking about; and as Stevenson said of the cow when they asked him the immortal question about the cow meeting the locomotive—it was “so much the worse for the eggs.” They broke promptly, and one fatal corner of the bag that held them began to leak on Edith’s pretty pink dress.
Dorothy tried to repair damages with her handkerchief, but there was a yellow smear on the front breadth, for all they could do. As it proved afterwards, it was poor Edith’s hoodoo day.
“Poor little eggs!” Louise lamented pensively. “Nobody’s wasting any sympathy on them—and they’re all broken up.”
“Oh, what an awful pun!” cried everybody; but Louise went on. She lifted the limp bag gingerly, and looked at it as if she was very sorry for it indeed.