“Baked potatoes!” she called back cheerily. “I put ’em in last thing before I left, an’ Katinka says they’re done. Supper’s ready when you are.”
I was hanging my white lady’s-cloth gown under the cretonne curtain.
“Katinka,” I repeated to Pelleas in a kind of absent-minded pleasure.
“It sounds like throwing down a handful of spoons,” submitted Pelleas, wrinkling the corners of his eyes.
We saw Katinka first when we were all about the table—Cousin Diantha, Miss Waitie who was her spinster sister, Pelleas and I, and Andy, who worked for his board. I shall not soon forget the picture that she made as she passed the corn cakes,—Katinka, little maid-of-all-work, in a patched black frock and a red rubber ring and a red rubber bracelet. Her face was round and polished and rosy with health, and she was always breathless and clothed with a pretty fear that she was doing everything wrong. Moreover, she had her ideas about serving—she afterward told me that she had worked for a week at the minister’s in Paddington where every one at breakfast, she added in an awed voice, “had a finger bowl to themself.” Cousin Diantha, good soul, cared very little how her dainties were served so that the table was kept groaning, and Katinka had therefore undertaken a series of reforms to impress which she moved in a mysterious way. For example, as she handed the corn cakes and just as I raised my hand to take one, steaming, moist, yellow and quite beneath my touch, the plate was suddenly sharply withdrawn, a spirited revolution of Katinka’s hands ensued, and the cakes reappeared upon my other side.
“We got the table set longways o’ the room to-night,” she explained frankly, “and I can’t hardly tell which is left till I look at my ring.”
Conversation with Katinka while she served was, I perceived, a habit of the house; and indeed Katinka’s accounts of kitchen happenings were only second in charm to Katinka’s comments upon the table talk. It was to this informality that I was indebted for chancing on a radiant mystery on that very night of our arrival.
“Mis’ Grocer Helman,” said Cousin Diantha to me at this first supper—every woman in Paddington has her husband’s occupation for a surname—“wants to come to see you about making over her silk. She’s heard you was from the city an’ she says Mis’ Photographer Bronson’s used up the only way she—Mis’ Grocer—knew on a cheap taffeta. Mis’ Grocer Helman won’t copy. She’s got a sinful pride.”
Katinka set down the bread plate.
“I got some loaf sugar sent up from Helman’s to-day,” she contributed, “because I just had to get that new delivery wagon up here to this house somehow. It’d been in front o’ Mis’ Lawyer More’s twict in one forenoon.”