Aunt Gertrude thought this a huge joke.
“But what will people think when they see you, my dear? We’ll have to get you fatter, too. Then people will say, ‘Do you see that fine, stout, rosy, cheerful man? Well, once he was as thin as a poker. Winkler’s Pastry gave him that lovely figure.’”
At the end of twenty minutes she had finished kneading and rolling the dough, and with a sigh of relief, turned to Paul.
“There now, you see exactly how it is done, don’t you?”
But Paul did not answer. With a stub of charcoal which he had fished from his pocket, the future baker was sketching busily on the smooth round top of a flour barrel. Aunt Gertrude’s mouth opened in speechless indignation.
“Tut! what are you doing?”
Paul looked up. Then, seeing Mrs. Lambert’s face, he began to laugh.
“Well, you told me to watch you, Aunt Gertrude. I’ve been watching you. Why are you cross?”
“But is that any way to do?” demanded Mrs. Lambert, clasping her hands with a gesture of indignant reproach. “Here I’ve been working and working, and there you sit, you bad boy—what are you drawing?”
Here her curiosity got the better of her annoyance, and she peered over his shoulder. The hasty sketch, which had been executed with a skill that Aunt Gertrude could not fully appreciate, showed a woman with her arms in a basin of dough—Aunt Gertrude herself, in fact. In arrangement, and in the freedom and vigor of every line, the rough picture gave evidence of really exceptional talent. Aunt Gertrude tried to look like a connoisseur.