“Oh, do!” pleaded Norah. As a matter of stern fact, Norah preferred bread-and-butter to pikelets, but the human beam in the cook-lady’s eye was not to be neglected. “We haven’t had any for ages.” She cast about for further encouragement for the beam. “Miss de Lisle, I suppose you have a very special cookery-book?”
“I make my own recipes,” said the cook-lady with pride. “But for the war I should have brought out my book.”
“By Jove, you don’t say so!” said Jim. “I say, Norah, you’ll have to get that when it comes out.”
“Rather!” said Norah. “I wonder would it bother you awfully to show me some day how to make meringues? I never can get them right.”
“We’ll see,” said Miss de Lisle graciously. “And would you really like pikelets for tea?”
“Please—if it wouldn’t be too much trouble.”
“Very well.” Jim held the door open for the cook-lady as she marched out. Suddenly she paused.
“You will see the housekeeper, Mr. Linton?”
“Oh, certainly!” said David Linton hastily. The door closed; behind it they could hear a tread, heavy and martial, dying away.
“A fearsome woman!” said Mr. Linton. “Wally, you deserve a medal! But are we always to lick the ground under the cook’s feet in this fashion?”