The Idyl of Twin Fires

by Walter Prichard Eaton

“I shouldn’t want you to wreck Bert’s domestic happiness,” said I, “but make the pie, just the same!”

I went into the south room, and sat at my desk answering some letters, while I waited for dinner. I could hear the rattle of dishes in the kitchen–the first of those humble domestic sounds which we associate with the word home. Through the house, too, and in to me, floated the aroma of bacon and of coffee, faintly, just detectable, mingled with the smell of earth under June rain, which drifted through an open window. Presently I heard the front door open very softly. As I guessed that Peter had his instructions in behaviour from his mother, I knew it must be Miss Goodwin. My pen poised suspended over the paper. I waited for her to enter the room, in a pleasant tingle of expectation. But she did not enter. Several minutes passed, and I got up to investigate, but there was no sign of her. The front door, however, stood ajar. Then Mrs. Pillig called “Dinner!”

I walked into my dining-room, and sat down at the table, which was covered with a new tablecloth and adorned with my new china. Beside my plate was the familiar, old-fashioned silver I had eaten with when a boy, and the sight of it thrilled me. Then I spied the centrepiece–a glass vase bearing three fresh iris buds from the brookside. Here was the secret, then, of the open door! Mrs. Pillig came in with the platter of eggs and bacon, and she, too, spied the flowers.

“Well, well, you’ve got yourself a bookay,” she said

“Well, well, you’ve got yourself a bookay,” she said.

“Not I,” was my answer. “They just came. Mrs. Pillig, there’s a fairy lives in this house, a nice, thoughtful fairy, who does things like this. If you ever see her, don’t be frightened.”

Mrs. Pillig looked at me pityingly. “I’ll bring your toast and coffee now,” she said.

The coffee came in steaming, and it was good coffee, much better than Mrs. Bert’s. The eggs were good, too. But best of all was the centrepiece. She had come in so softly, and gone so quickly, and nobody had seen her! She had been present at my first meal in Twin Fires, after all, and so delicately present, just in the subtle fragrance of flowers and the warm token of thoughtfulness! My meal was a very happy one, happier even, perhaps, than it would have been had she sat opposite me in person. We are curious creatures, who can on occasion extract a sweeter pleasure from our dreams of others in loneliness than from their bodily presence. Mrs. Pillig fluttered in and out, to see if I was faring well, and though her service was not that of a trained waitress it sufficed to bring me dessert of some canned peaches, buried under my own rich cream, and to remind me that my wants were solicitously cared for. Out on the porch I could see Peter playing with Buster and hear that ingratiating pup’s yelps of canine delight. Before me stood the purple iris blooms, with golden hearts just opening, their slender stems rising from the clear water in the vase, and spoke of her whose thought of me was so gracious, so delicately expressed, so warming to my heart. The spoon I held bore my mother’s initials, reminding me of my childhood, of that other home which death had broken up ten years before, since when I had called no place home save my study and bedroom high above the college Yard. I thought of the Yard–pleasantly, but without regrets. I looked through the window as my last spoonful of dessert was eaten, and saw the sky breaking into blue. I folded my new napkin, put it into the old silver ring which bore the word “John” on the side, failed utterly to note the absence of a finger-bowl, and rose from my first meal in Twin Fires.