She blew a kiss to him from the tips of her fingers. “They are perfectly sweet. And we can have an omelette. Only if we eat any more eggs, we’ll be flapping our wings.”
“I don’t care what we have. I am so hungry I could eat a house.” He went back up the stairs, laughing.
Jane, breaking eggs into a bowl, meditated on the nonchalance of men. She meditated, too, on the mystery of Baldy’s mood. The flowers were evidence of high exaltation. He did not often lend himself to such extravagance.
He came down presently and helped carry in the belated dinner. The potatoes lay like withered leaves in a silver dish, the cornbread was a wrinkled wreck, the pudding a travesty. Only Jane’s omelette and a lettuce salad had escaped the blight of delay.
Then, too, there was Philomel, singing. Jane drew a cup of coffee, hot and strong, and set it at her brother’s place. The violets were in the center of the table, the cats purring on the hearth.
Jane loved her little home with almost passionate intensity. She loved to have Baldy in a mood like this—things right once more with his world.
She knew it was so by the ring of his voice, the cock of his head—hence she was not in the least surprised when he leaned forward under the old-fashioned spreading dome which drenched him with light, and said, “I’ve such a lot to tell you, Jane; the most amazing thing has happened.”