Two hours later she stood in the red-tiled kitchen busy with her flour dredgers and baking boards and great jars of sugar and currants. She liked the warm buttery smell of baking and the mastery of familiar instruments and quick confident movements over tins and oven and wooden spoons. She enjoyed the blast of warm air that struck her cheeks when she opened the oven door, and the greetings of men who passed the kitchen window on their way from one stackyard to another.
When Violet came from the "front way" to make an eleven o'clock cup of tea, Mary was in a thoroughly good humour, her early-morning depression forgotten.
"I don't think," she said, rubbing the flour off her hands, "that you ever told me if you found your aunt better, when you went to see her in Hardrascliffe on Saturday."
"I didn't go. Please, m'm, are you ready for me to mash the tea?"
"Yes please—the brown pot. Why didn't you go?"
"I went to the pictures with Percy Deane."
"With Percy Deane? Why, what's happened to Fred Stephens?"
Violet flung the tea into the cups with more generosity than discretion. Mary's table suffered a little during the process.
"Oh. I'm off with Fred. Will you have a bit of cheese-cake, m'm?"
"Violet, why are you off with Fred? He's an awfully nice boy. I can't say I ever did think much of Percy. He drinks too much and he's not a steady worker. I'm sure he's not the man for you. Now Fred——"