I was lost. Mrs. Carmichael rose, and put aside the brush and comb.
“So, Mr. Butterfield,” she said. “I begin to see. You laid a trap for me. You got Caroline to coach you in things before coming to see me, and edited the recipes! Let me remember. You told me, did you not, that brown sugar improved poached eggs?”
“Mrs. Carmichael——” I began. She silenced me with a gesture.
“You advised me, did you not, that maccaroni should be kept in a dark place for fear it should sprout?”
“That, Mrs. Carmichael, was on the authority of the Times. You surely——”
Again the peremptory finger reduced me to dumbness.
“And you stepped in after all my blunders, and airily set me right! Mr. Butterfield, you are an unspeakable deception!”
That was my thanks. Carrie and I might conspire to do good by stealth—I might go out of my way to gather hints on pastry—and because, forsooth, this woman’s execution was not equal to the brilliance of the idea, I was to be branded as a fraud! The brown sugar was an original notion; and if, forsooth, like the Great Eastern, it turned out unmanageable in practice, that did not detract from the boldness of the conception. Women are so conservative; they lack the true inventor’s spirit.
I looked helplessly round the room. I was overpowered at the ease with which people will impute to one a base motive rather than go out of the beaten track to find a good one. How they give themselves away!
I turned and apostrophised Master Christopher.