“From my fond lips the eager answers fall—thinking—”
A pause, as Bess stopped to glance at a cookbook which lay on a table just before her, and into her song was woven, “(‘three eggs well beaten’) thinking I hear thee call.”
Then she closed her lips and softly hummed the air as she was vigorously beating a cream mixture in a huge yellow bowl.
The beautiful picture which she made held the eaves-dropper entranced, and he scarcely breathed lest his presence be discovered and the charming vision be gone.
Bess had on an immense blue and white gingham apron, the sleeves rolled high up above her dimpled elbows, exposing the creamy white of the fore-arm. A line of tan about the wrist showed that she had been thoughtless about exposing her hands to the sun and wind. A big floppy bow of black ribbon unsuccessfully restrained the soft knot of hair on her neck, and her “forelock,” as she had denominated it, lay almost directly on her nose, all snowy white. A little unconscious puff at the obstruction sent a tiny white cloud of flour into the air, which elicited an audible smile from the figure at the doorway. Bess quickly turned and faced the visitor.
“Oh! Mr. Davis, aren’t you dreadful to startle one so! The lady of the house is out,” she said with a soft Irish twang to the words, “and ’tis against the rules an’ regulations of this household to intertain any company in the kitchen.” She artfully caught hold of either side of her apron and made a sweeping courtesy to him.
“Oh, please let me come in, little girl; I’m lonesome; I haven’t seen you for three days, and now you would drive me away.”
Davis came up to the opposite side of the table, and presented such a pathetic, pleading spectacle that Bess relented and permitted him to be seated. Cautiously he sank into a chair and tenderly rested his lame foot across the crutch. Bess again took up the big spoon and pounded away vigorously at the contents in the yellow bowl, trying to cover her confusion.
It is trying, at best, for even an expert in the culinary art, to be closely watched while engrossed in the intricacies of mixing a cake; but how much more so, when a girl has not “tried her luck” for months, and besides, when the table, the floor, the apron, her face, and even her hair, bear strong circumstantial evidence that the flour-sifter had leaked profusely. Furthermore, one dismal failure was spread out in full, accusing view on the table before her. Her cheeks burned with brilliant color, and her brown eyes flashed half nervously and half defiantly as she wielded the spoon.