“Now, will you please sit here while I get things ready?” said Gretel, drawing up two chairs to the dining table. She was feeling decidedly relieved at having gotten her visitors safely away from the piano.
“What have you got?” demanded Peter, the last vestige of whose shyness had melted away the moment his sister Dora left the room.
“Something very nice,” said Gretel, smiling; “at least I hope you’ll think them nice. Dora said Lillie was very fond of them.”
Both visitors looked interested. Lillie seated herself at the table, and folded her hands primly in her lap. But Peter was not so easily satisfied.
“Let’s go and see what it is,” he proposed to his sister, as Gretel left the room.
“Of course not,” said Lillie, indignantly. “Ain’t we company? Company never goes into the kitchen in places like this.”
“Bosh!” retorted Peter. “She ain’t nothing but a kid, like us. I’m going, anyway.”
And, deaf to his sister’s expostulations, he followed Gretel into the kitchen.
Having secured the precious cream-puffs from the ice chest, and placed them on a plate covered with a napkin, Gretel was in the act of procuring another plate and a couple of forks, when, startled by a slight sound behind her, she turned to find Peter once more at her elbow.
“I say!” exclaimed that youth in a tone of rapture, “it’s cream-puffs, the best ever; but ain’t there more than two?”