"Let's look into the kitchen."
She knew the way, and led him into a great food-studio—a place to delight a chef with its equipment and an artist with its coppers.
But the range was as cold as its white-glazed chimney. They cast about for fuel, and found that Prout had fetched kindling and coal the afternoon before.
Forbes soon had a fire snapping under one lid, and Persis hunted through cupboards and closets till she discovered a coffee-pot, evidently belonging to the servants' dining-room, and a canister half full of coffee.
"I haven't the faintest idea how much of that goes in, have you?" she said, helplessly. He nodded and made the measurements deftly.
"Where did you learn so much?" she asked, with a primeval woman's first wonder at a cave-man's first blaze and first cookery.
"A soldier ought to be able to build a fire and make a cup of coffee, oughtn't he?"
"Oh," she shrugged, "I always forget that you're a soldier. I've never seen you in uniform. You never tell me anything about yourself. I always think of you as just one of us loafers."
"It's mighty pleasant to be building a fire for you—for just us," he maundered.
"It is fine, isn't it?" she chuckled, with glistening eyes. "Rather reversing the usual, though, for idiotic woman to stand by while strong man boils the coffee—or are you baking it? I might be getting the dishes."