I spent a hectic day in the kitchen on Wednesday. Mrs. Winter was fighting a bad cold, and chose to resent the list of extra delicacies which Beryl had airily handed in. “One ’ud think it was a ball supper at Govinment House, instead of a picnic on a sandy island,” she grumbled, and made a hundred difficulties. Beryl had disappeared; as a matter of fact, she had never appeared at all, but had sent her list by Julia; and Mrs. McNab was vaguer than ever, and had a kind of worried look that I put down to trouble over her writing. Whatever delight her work might give her when once she was shut up in her sanctum, the period while it was hatching in her brain seemed to be something like what one endures in cutting a wisdom-tooth. I felt sorry for her as she went about with her dreamy look—she was so far apart from all the cheery, happy-go-lucky house-party. At any rate, it was my job, as I recollected, to act as her buffer; and the end of it was I pretended that I had an easy day, rolled up my sleeves, and went to help in the cooking.
That cheered Mrs. Winter a good deal. She was really very seedy, with the kind of heavy head-cold that makes speech difficult and extra brain-exertion a torment: she welcomed my cooperation even more than my actual help in the work, and forgot a good many of her woes in the course of the first hour. I made oyster-patties and charlotte russe and fruit salad, and we thought out new ideas for sandwiches and cool drinks. I even managed to enlist Judy and Jack, as the best means of keeping them out of mischief; Mrs. Winter supplied them with aprons and they beat up eggs and whipped cream, and became desperately interested in my sponge-lilies and cheese-straws. “I’d be a cook myself, if I could always make things like these,” Judy averred, as she sat on the table, delicately licking the cream from a sponge-lily, with a red tongue that seemed as long as an ant-eater’s. “How ever do you go on cooking things like boiled mutton and steak-and-onions, Mrs. Winter, when you might make gorgeous experiments all the time?”
Mrs. Winter sniffed.
“If you had to eat theb thigs for a week, Biss Judy, you’d be botherig roud the kitched for good boiled buttod and sdeak-ad-odiods,” she said severely—at which afflicted utterance the pair yelled with joy, and spent much time in devising questions that could only be answered in words containing letters impossible at the moment to the poor woman. By four o’clock we had made all the preparations that could be finished that day, and had got the dinner well under way as well. Mrs. Winter sighed with relief as I washed the kitchen table.
“I thought this bordig I’d be id by bed before dight,” she said. “But I’ve laughed at you three so buch by cold’s dearly god, I believe! Off you go, Biss Earle—you bust be tired.”
“No, I’m not,” I said. “I have a dress to iron yet: I’ll come back and help you when I’ve done it. You’re not to get yourself all hot over dishing-up.”
“ ’Deed, an’ you’ve been enough in the kitchen for wan day,” said a new voice; and Julia came in, with my rough-dry frock over her arm. “Let you run off to your tay: I’m afther bringin’ this in from the line, and I’ll have it ironed in two twos an’ be ready to do the dishin’-up meself. Take her away, now, Miss Judy an’ Master Jack. An’ for pity’s sake wash the two faces of ye before your Mother sees you, for there’s samples on them of every blessed thing that’s been cooked to-day!” Whereat Judy and Jack gripped each an arm and raced me off to my room.
I saw that they were respectable, made a hasty toilet myself, and we went out to the lawn, where afternoon tea was in full swing. A stranger was there, sitting in a basket-chair by Mrs. McNab: a spare, elderly man with keen blue eyes, at sight of whom my charges uttered a delighted yelp.
“Hallo, Dr. Firth! We’ve been cooking!”
“Then I won’t stay to dinner, thank you,” replied the stranger promptly. “Not that I believe you have; you’re far too clean!”