“We loved watching you!” said Grace Farquhar, in her soft drawl.
“I haven’t a doubt of it,” Helen laughed. “Well, it’s something to have been able to provide a circus before supper. Will anyone give me a méringue? Thanks, Jo. Have one yourself.”
“I’ve had all that’s prudent, thanks,” Jo Weston answered. “Méringues soon go to your head after you’ve been in strict training for tennis. Did you get an éclair, Nita?”
“I did—thanks to you,” Nita laughed. “Nothing but the vision of missing them would have dragged me from my pillow. I know your mother’s éclairs, you see. When are you going to learn to make them, Jo?”
“Mother might teach me in these hols., she said,” responded Jo. “But she’s not very keen on teaching us while we’re at school. She says we’re to learn all the cookery and domestic science stuff we can from Miss Smith, and she’ll see what it amounts to after we leave. Then she’ll round off the corners.” She laughed. “Personally, I think she’ll find us all corners. Mother hasn’t got any degrees and letters after her name, like the worshipful Smithy, but when it comes to running a house practically, I think she’d leave her cold!”
“Oh, but who would expect Smithy to be practical?” demanded Grace. “She looks so exquisite, and she wears such fetching uniforms, and she’s terribly impressive; but you always have the feeling at the back of your mind that she’d expire if the gas-stove wouldn’t act!”
“Yes—I’d love to see her reduced to the cooking outfit my grandmother had in the bush,” said Helen. “Colonial oven—did any one of you ever see one?”
There was a chorus of “No.”
“Just a big oven, built in between bricks; you put a fire underneath and another on top. Then you had a couple of bars across the fire, and balanced your saucepans on that. No pretty aluminium saucepans in those days; just big heavy iron pots.”
“Gracious!” said the chorus.