But the grape-fruit—that was another new thing learned—was prepared the way Helen said a trained nurse had taught her, one time when her mother was ill. It was cut in half, the pulp dug out with a spoon into a cup or saucer, and after the pith had been removed, chopped finely, returned to shell, and then sugared and put on the ice. But perhaps the best part of helping Mother that morning was when, after striking the Japanese gong eight bells, Nathalie arrayed herself in Felia’s freshly laundered cap and apron and stationed herself back of her mother’s chair to serve breakfast.
How pleased and surprised her mother was! Dick “Blue Robined” her again, while Lucille patronizingly exclaimed, “Oh, Nathalie, you make a swell maid—and how smart you are getting!”
Just before dinner, Helen appeared again, and taught her how to make soup from a few boiled bones and a chunk of meat, a few left-over tomatoes, and a bit of onion and seasoning. She taught her to broil a steak,—this time without a burnt speck—how to make white sauce for some left-over fish, how to scrape new potatoes economically, and the right way to cook peas. Then came a delicious dessert of stale pieces of cake and canned peaches, laid in layers with beaten cream, and topped off with little white pigs, as Nathalie called the tiny bits of egg froth floating on its surface. Truly, it was a dinner fit for a king!
After dinner her sensitive soul rebelled at the pile of greasy dishes, but the task grew lighter when Helen showed her how to make the water hot and soapy, using a lot of dried bits of soap that Nathalie was going to throw away, by sewing them in cheese-cloth bags. She washed the glasses and silver first, then the china, and then—oh, horrors—the pots! But when the new Pioneer saw how her friend put them on to boil, thus doing away with so much grease, it was a revelation. And when the dish-towels were washed and hung out in the sun to sweeten, and the sink was scrubbed with a brush and a cleansing soap, Nathalie was again forced to admit that she had mastered another household science.
Oh, no, it wasn’t all plain sailing—the world isn’t run that way—and the new Pioneer’s back, eyes, and feet made themselves forcibly known before she went to bed that night. Many a time she had had to grit her teeth, summon Miss I Can to her side, and with forced determination go on with the job; but after all, she declared, as she turned out the light, “I have helped Mother!” and then sleep claimed the tired girl.
When Saturday morning came, however, and no Felia made her appearance according to promise, Nathalie’s face grew somber, and she could not help going to the door every few minutes to see if she were not in sight, for she had planned to go on a bird-hike that morning with the Pioneers to learn bird-calls. As the clock struck nine she dropped her broom—she was sweeping the kitchen—and rushed to her room. Here she wept copiously for a while in her clothes closet with her head buried in the skirts of her dresses, so no one could hear, and then she heard her mother calling her.
She dried her eyes guiltily, scrubbed her face to brush away all trace of tears, and then answered blithely, “Here I am, Mumsie, I’m coming right down to finish the kitchen.” When she came tearing down the stairs she found the kitchen swept and garnished, and lo! there stood Mother with big, surprised eyes pointing to Lucille, who, as she caught sight of her cousin, bobbed her head and dropped a curtsy, crying, “Sure, ma’am, it’s a new job I’m afther takin’ on meself, but do yez see the loikes of it for the claneness?”
Nathalie gave one bewildered stare, and then a merry peal of laughter broke from her, seconded with a minor note from her mother, and with a bass accompaniment added by Dick, as he entered and sensed the situation. Yes, Miss I Can must have caught Lucille in her meshes, too, for that young lady, generally so dainty in her labor preferences, had condescended to sweep the kitchen.
“Well,” she explained apologetically, “I was jealous of the praise bestowed upon Nathalie, and thought I’d show you folks that people can do things even if they are not Blue Robins.”
“Oh, Lucille, you aren’t a Blue Robin, you’re a duck of a dear,” bubbled Nathalie as she hugged her cousin rapturously. “It was just lovely of you. But Mother, did you know what she was doing?”