It sounded simple, but there were difficulties. In the first place he had to face Cook, and Cook hated to have children in the kitchen.
"But you'd have to face more than that if you were grown up and in the trenches. And Hodgson is really very kind."
"Well, she doesn't look kind, Mother."
"Why not?"
"Well, she doesn't smile, and her face is wed."
"Red, dear."
"Ur-ed—. And when I ask her for milk for Polly, she says 'Milk for cats,' and when she gets it out, she slams the 'frigerator door."
"Refrigerator, dear."
"Rif-iggerator."
But in the main Teddy went to his task valiantly. He conserved bones for Muffin and left-over corn-meal cakes. Polly Ann dined rather monotonously on fish boiled with war-bread crusts, on the back of Cook's big range. Hodgson was conscientious and salted it and cooled it, and kept it in a little covered granite pail, and it was from this pail that Teddy ladled stew into Polly Ann's blue saucer. "Mother says it is very good of you, Hodgson, to take so much trouble."