"I hope Winifred hasn't seen us," she said. "The kitchen and the nursery are both to the east. We'll take a chance. You go on into the kitchen and help her, and I'll telephone down from my room. Au 'voir!"
She opened the outer door ever so slightly and oozed through the slit as narrowly as Bernhardt used to when she had murdered Scarpia. Forbes dawdled a few moments, then went into the kitchen.
He found Winifred playing the part of cook with a vengeance. Her hair was disheveled, her sleeves rolled back, and her face smudged from her smudgy fingers. She had assumed a cook's prerogative of wrath. The moment she saw Forbes she began with a savage, "Oh, it's you! And who's been littering up my clean kitchen?"
"I took the liberty of making myself a little coffee," said Forbes.
"There are two cups."
"I made two cups," said Forbes; and she was too busy to notice the evasion.
"Then, since you've had your breakfast," she snapped, "you can help me get something for the rest. You'd better put this on."
Like another Omphale, she fastened a womanish apron on Hercules, and set him at uncongenial tasks, retrieving butter, milk, salt, and eggs.
After a time there was a buzz, and a little hopper fell in a box on the wall. Winifred went to the house telephone and called out:
"Well! H'lo, Perse, what you doing awake so early? Insomnia? No, I will not send your breakfast up on a tray! You can come down and get it. My little snojer man is helping me."