“How is the soap getting on, Kitty?” she asked. “Why, Mr. Yates, are you here?”
“Am I here? I should say I was. Very much here. I’m the hired man. I’m the hewer of wood and the hauler of water, or, to speak more correctly, I’m the hauler of both. And, besides, I’ve been learning how to make soap, Mrs. Bartlett.”
“Well, it won’t hurt you to know how.”
“You bet it won’t. When I get back to New York, the first thing I shall do will be to chop down a buttonwood tree in the park, if I can find one, and set up a leach for myself. Lye comes useful in running a paper.”
Mrs. Bartlett’s eyes twinkled, for, although she did not quite understand his nonsense, she knew it was nonsense, and she had a liking for frivolous persons, her own husband being so somber-minded.
“Tea is ready,” she said. “Of course you will stay, Mr. Yates.”
“Really, Mrs. Bartlett, I cannot conscientiously do so. I haven’t earned a meal since the last one. No; my conscience won’t let me accept, but thank you all the same.”
“Nonsense; my conscience won’t let you go away hungry. If nobody were to eat but those who earn their victuals, there would be more starving people in the world than there are. Of course you’ll stay.”
“Now, that’s what I like, Mrs. Bartlett. I like to have a chance of refusing an invitation I yearn for, and then be forced to accept. That’s true hospitality.” Then in a whisper he added to Kitty; “If you dare to say ‘buttonwood,’ Miss Bartlett, you and I will quarrel.”
But Kitty said nothing, now that her mother had appeared on the scene, but industriously stirred the contents of the iron kettle.