So she was a cook! She could make cake as good as the sample under present mastication! What a girl! And what a wife! Nathan wondered if he hadn’t better get down on his knees that night and humbly say some regular prayers.
Of course she depreciated her ability as a cake-maker. This was merely a little old mess she had “thrown together.” Some night he must come to tea and she would show him what a real meal was like. Would he come to tea?
Oh, well, Nathan might. He applied himself rather diligently at the “office”, didn’t have much time for social nonsense. Still there were occasions when it was beneficial for a man’s head to forget business. Yes, possibly he might squeeze out a night and come to tea.
The cake being eaten and the milk consumed—so much so that Old Man Cuttner ate his porridge next morning milkless—and the hour being late, there was nothing for Nat to do but take his departure. Which he did—regretfully.
“I’m depending on you to help me with my problem, Mr. Forge,” was the last thing the girl whispered to him solemnly in the cold front hall.
“Depend upon it, I shall not fail you,” were Nathan’s magnanimous words, closing that wonderful evening. And he walked off with his head high in the air, manfully, masterfully, to skid badly on the ice by the gate and turn bottom up with his hat flattened beneath him. But the Cuttner front door had closed. His fiancee had not seen.
Therefore Nathan picked himself up painfully, knocked the dents from his hat, limped more carefully down the rest of the sidewalk and came back to the world.