"Attention, everybody! Beecher and Garraboy are the chefs. Each one must choose his scullery-maid. Mr. Majendie is to make the punch. Everyone else is butler and waitress. Mrs. Cheever, did you ever peel onions?"
"Good heavens, no!" said Mrs. Cheever, delicately recoiling.
"Well, there are no onions to peel," said Mrs. Kildair, laughing. "All you have to do is to carry dishes or make the toast—on to the kitchen!"
"Miss Charters, you are engaged at any salary you may name," said Beecher, forestalling Garraboy, who was coming forward.
"But I shall drop every dish," said Nan Charters, rising from the piano. "I don't know anything about cooking."
"Splendid! Then you'll make no mistakes."
He installed her at one end of the table, and went off for the chafing-dish. When he returned, gingerly balancing it on a silver platter, Garraboy, profiting by his absence, was seated beside Nan Charters, speaking in a purposely low voice. She was listening, perfectly composed, looking straight before her with a tolerant, uninterested smile.
If women often can conceal their true natures from women, men seldom deceive one another. There was a fixity in Garraboy's glance which Beecher understood and hotly resented. But at the moment when, setting the tray on the table, he was meditating some ill-advised remark, Mrs. Cheever, passing by, said with ill-concealed impatience in her thin, hurried voice:
"Mr. Garraboy, I am sorry for you, but I have been assigned as your assistant, and I should like to know what I am to do."
Garraboy rose immediately, bowed with perfect suavity, and rejoined Mrs. Cheever, who said to him something that the others did not hear, but at which they saw him shrug his shoulders.