“Then it must be Sarah’s fault. She has done something to it. It is too bad—I took such pains!” She looked pathetically at the red marks which still lingered on her fingers from that painful cutting and scraping, and there was a distinct air of resentment in the voice in which she questioned her assistant a moment later.
Sarah was a round-faced, vacant-looking damsel of sixteen summers, who had come straight from an industrial home to serve in the O’Shaughnessy family. She was scrupulously clean, admirably willing, and so blindly obedient that in the bosom of the family she was known by the title of “Casabianca.” She understood to a nicety how to dust and sweep, make beds and turn out a room, but the manners and customs of gentlefolk had been an unknown science to her before entering her present situation, and anything that Bridgie chose to do was, in her eyes, a demonstration of what was right and proper. She adored her young mistress, and trembled at the new tone of severity in which she was addressed.
“Please, ma’am, I did nothing at it!”
“But something has happened to it, Sarah—that’s quite certain. Think now—think carefully what you have done since I left the kitchen. I am not angry, only anxious to find out what has gone wrong.”
It was really most embarrassing. The three young gentlemen were watching her with laughing eyes, the pretty young lady in the pink dress was staring at her plate and twisting her lips to keep from smiling, the Missis sat up straight in her chair and looked so grave and masterful. Like Topsy of old, Sarah tried hard to find something to confess, but failed to recall any delinquencies.
“I took it out of the oven when you said, and put it on a plate. I brought it into the room—”
“You are quite sure you didn’t let anything fall into it by mistake?”
“Please, ma’am, there was nothing to fall. I had tidied the things away before I touched it. I put the macaroni sticks back in the bag and the beeswax along of the turpentine for to-morrow’s cleaning—all that you didn’t use for the pudding.”
“The—the—what?” gasped Bridgie breathlessly.
But the next moment a great burst of laughter all round the table greeted the solution of the mystery. Pat capered about the floor, Jack put his elbows on the table and peered at Sylvia with dancing eyes, Miles undauntedly helped himself to another spoonful, and wagged his head as who should say that, beeswax or no beeswax, he stuck to his favourable verdict on the “mixture.” Bridgie’s soft, gurgling laugh was full of unaffected enjoyment.