It was great fun till the long process of boiling and simmering came, and the kitchen grew hot, as, boy fashion, they stuffed the range with kindling and coal, and in consequence had to cook their sweet stuff on the very rear edge of the range.
But Sydney found Max a good partner in distress. He did even more than his share of the watching and stirring, declaring it was the proper work of the second cook.
“How is it, Max, that whatever you take up, you do it so perfectly, so successfully at the very first? I must always try and try again.”
“I don’t know. I like to undertake new things. I put my whole mind on what I do.”
“So do I. But it’s something more than that. Look at the way you have taken to the work in the hothouses. Only yesterday Mrs. Schmitz said you learned wonderfully fast; as if you knew long ago, and had only to ‘remember it as from sleep waking.’”
“How could I help learning about plants with her to teach me? She makes them so interesting. She loves them as if they were children, and while I’m with her I feel the same. If it wasn’t for music I could be willing to work always with them.”
“Yet you couldn’t get work last winter. That seems strange.”
Max thought a moment before replying. “I don’t understand it myself. The first work I had after I arrived in the City of Green Hills was collecting for a doctor. I was too careless—no, I didn’t know enough to hide the money; and the third day a big fellow caught me in a lonely place and robbed me. The doctor wouldn’t believe me, and so I lost that job.”
“Gee! That was rough.”
“The next thing was being bell boy at a hotel. That lasted two months, but——say, Sydney, I just hated that work. At first it made me feel mean to take tips; then I got to looking for ’em, and I—left.”