HALF an hour later, anyone who looked in at the windows of the Pomeroy kitchen would have seen a pretty sight. Polly, mounted on a stool, was beating a golden mixture in a white bowl, and Arctura, at the opposite end of the long table, was stirring whites of eggs carefully into a white batter in a yellow bowl.
POLLY WAS BEATING A GOLDEN MIXTURE IN A BIG WHITE BOWL
“This is what I call solid comfort,” said Arctura, gayly. “I don’t know when I’ve had such a helper as you are! Miss Hetty’s without the gift when it comes to cooking. You wouldn’t believe it, but she’d be just as likely to put the eggs right in after the butter, without beating ’em separate, as any other way. Ain’t it singular?”
“I expect she writes beautiful letters, Miss Arctura,” said Polly, loyally evading the discussion of Miss Pomeroy’s weak point.
“My, I guess she does!” said Arctura, heartily. “That’s it; we’ve all got different talents. Hiram says he’d full as soon see me with a pistol pointed at him as with a pen in my hand. The only way I ever wrote a letter was by main strength, and I’d rather take a whipping any time.”
“I guess it would be pretty hard work for anybody to whip you,” said Polly, shrewdly, and Arctura laughed with much relish.
“’Twould now-a-days,” she said, as she gave the final stir to her batter, “but I’ve been whipped in my time. I didn’t get my growth all at once, you see. Is your cake ready for the pans? You wait till I show you the cunning little brush I’m going to butter the tins with. I’ll let you do yours next time, after I’ve once showed you how. You can’t slight the edges or any spot, if you want the cakes to slip out right.”
When the heat of the oven had been tested and the little round tins had been put in and the oven doors shut on them, Arctura selected a stout testing straw from a pile on a high shelf above the kitchen sink and seated herself, holding the straw erect in her hand like a tiny weapon.
“I always take this time for a breathing spell,” she announced, motioning Polly to another chair, “for if I start in on a fresh job, those cakes more’n likely’ll get burned; it only takes twenty-five minutes to bake ’em to the queen’s taste.”