“It looks a little like rain, doesn’t it? Do you think it will rain, Mrs. Marsh?”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” returned Mrs. Marsh absently. “I wonder what is keeping Ada? Just run and ask her how soon she will be ready, Gretel, before I pour her coffee.”
Gretel promptly departed, returning in a few moments with the announcement that Ada was only just awake, and would like her breakfast in bed.
“Then you had better take it right in to her before it gets cold,” Ada’s mother advised, and leaving her own breakfast to cool, Gretel proceeded to prepare a tempting little tray to be carried to Miss Marsh’s bedside.
But tempting as the meal looked, it did not satisfy the fastidious Ada. The toast was too hard, and the coffee had to be sent back for more cream. Couldn’t Gretel make her a few hot slices of toast, and boil a fresh egg, “not more than three minutes?” Of course Gretel could and did, and by the time Ada was comfortably settled with her tray, Mrs. Marsh had finished her breakfast, and Gretel’s oatmeal was quite cold. She was taking the plate to the kitchen, to warm it, when Mrs. Marsh encountered her, and asked rather sharply: “Where are you going now?”
“I’m going to warm my porridge,” Gretel explained.
Mrs. Marsh frowned.
“Nonsense,” she said sharply; “little girls shouldn’t be so fussy about their food. Sit down and eat your breakfast at once; you’ve dawdled over it quite long enough already.”
“I wasn’t dawdling,” began Gretel; “I was boiling an egg for Ada.” But Mrs. Marsh was already half out of the room, and did not hear, so, with a sigh of resignation, Gretel sat down to her cold breakfast.
Mrs. Marsh went out to a meeting that morning, but Ada said she had taken cold the night before, and declared her intention of staying in bed till luncheon time.