“I am sure I don’t know,” Ruth said, and she looked helpless and bewildered.
“Well, then, I’ll look for it. We must have a fire the first thing. I wonder where the kindlings are?”
Then she began to open little doors and crannies, in a wise sort of way, Ruth looking on, not knowing that there were such places to search into. Both hearth-brush and kindlings were found, and Susan attacked the range, while Ruth took up a china cup and set it down again, moved a pile of plates to the side of the table and moved them back again, looking utterly dazed and useless.
“I wonder if this damper turns up or down?”
This from Susan, and her sister turned and surveyed the damper with a grave, puzzled air before she spoke.
“It is no sort of use to ask me. I never even examined the range. I know no more about the dampers than the people on the street do.”
“Never mind,” said Susan, “the smoke does. It puffs out with one arrangement, and goes up the chimney, as it should, with the other.”
“I don’t know how we are ever to do it,” Ruth said.
“What, make the fire? Why, it is made already! Don’t you hear it roar? This is a splendid range; I should think it would be fun to cook with it. Our stove was cracked, and one door-hinge was broken, and besides it wouldn’t bake on the bottom. The stove wouldn’t, you know—not the broken hinge.”
Susan rarely—indeed, I might say never—indulged in reminiscence, and therefore Ruth was touched.