"It isn't any bother. I often sit there."
He followed her into the bright little kitchen, hoping that in a new environment he might be able to break through her reticence; but Hertha herself helped him.
"I'm going to make you a cup of cocoa," she said. "You're cold and you need something to warm you up."
Beyond allowing him to light the gas stove, she refused all assistance, and as he stood watching her go through her deft movements, measuring, stirring, and at last pouring a foaming liquid into their two cups—for to his delight she was to share the meal—he was more attracted and yet more puzzled than ever.
"You cook mighty well," he said as she poured the hot cocoa.
"I'm used to doing little things about the house," she answered. "Before I came here I was a companion in a family."
The statement was made on the spur of the moment, but as Hertha thought it over she was delighted that she had been able to say something that opened up a way to live in the past without embarrassment, almost without falsehood. To conjure up the world of white people in her grandfather's home had been beyond her power; even in her thoughts she had stumbled in her endeavor to climb the ladder that led to their eminence. But as a companion in the Merryvale household she was in familiar surroundings.
Richard Brown on his part was a little disappointed. He had been dreaming of a princess in disguise and he found only a poor relation. In the large families of the South there were sometimes girls like this, though when they were so pretty they usually soon married, girls who had to do the odd tasks, give up the good times, go to live with some distant cousin or aunt as the case might be. That sort of thing made a girl shy and quiet. For the first time that evening he felt at ease.
"I bet there ain't anybody in New York can make cocoa to beat yours,", he declared emphatically. "I never liked the stuff before."
"I should have made you coffee," Hertha said regretfully. "I forgot, because coffee keeps me awake."