Part 20 (1/2)

”Mother will be sorry to keep you waiting, but she will come directly.

She is just in the middle of an apple-pudding.”

Rosamond said it with as much simple grace of pride as if she had had to say, ”Mother is busy at her modelling, and cannot leave her clay till she has damped and covered it.” Her nice perception went to the very farther-most; it discerned the real best to be made of things, the best that was _ready_ made, and put that forth.

”And I know,” said Madam Pennington, ”that an apple-pudding must not be left in the middle. I wonder if she would let an old woman who has lived in barracks come to her where she is?”

Rosamond's tact was superlative. She did not say, ”I will go and see”; she got right up and said, ”I am sure she will; please come this way,”

and opened the door, with a sublime confidence, full and without warning, upon the scene of operations.

”O, how nice!” said Miss Elizabeth; and Madam Pennington walked forward into the suns.h.i.+ne, holding her hand out to Mrs. Holabird, and smiling all the way from her smooth old forehead down to the ”seventh beauty” of her dimple-cleft and placid chin.

”Why, this is really coming to see people!” she said.

Mrs. Holabird's white hand did not even want dusting; she just laid down the bright little chopper with which she was reducing her flour and b.u.t.ter to a golden powder, and took Madam Pennington's nicely gloved fingers into her own, without a breath of apology. Apology! It was very meek of her not to look at all set up.

Barbara rose from her chair with a red ringlet of apple-paring hanging down against her white ap.r.o.n, and seated herself again at her work when the visitors had taken the two opposite corners of the deep, cus.h.i.+oned sofa.

The red cloth was folded back across the end of the dining-table, and at the other end were mother's white board and rolling-pin, the pudding-cloth wrung into a twist out of the scald, and waiting upon a plate, and a pitcher of cold water with ice tinkling against its sides. Mother sat with the deal bowl in her lap, turning and mincing with the few last strokes the light, delicate dust of the pastry. The suns.h.i.+ne--work and suns.h.i.+ne always go so blessedly together--poured in, and filled the room up with life and glory.

”Why, this is the pleasantest room in all your house!” said Miss Elizabeth.

”That is just what Ruth said it would be when we turned it into a kitchen,” said Barbara.

”You don't mean that this is really your kitchen!”

”I don't think we are quite sure what it is,” replied Barbara, laughing. ”We either dine in our kitchen or kitch in our dining-room; and I don't believe we have found out yet which it is!”

”You are wonderful people!”

”You ought to have belonged to the army, and lived in quarters,” said Mrs. Pennington. ”Only you would have made your rooms so bewitching you would have been always getting turned out.”

”Turned out?”

”Yes; by the ranking family. That is the way they do. The major turns out the captain, and the colonel the major. There's no rest for the sole of your foot till you're a general.”

Mrs. Holabird set her bowl on the table, and poured in the ice-water.

Then the golden dust, turned and cut lightly by the chopper, gathered into a tender, mellow ma.s.s, and she lifted it out upon the board.

She shook out the scalded cloth, spread it upon the emptied bowl, sprinkled it snowy-thick with flour, rolled out the crust with a free quick movement, and laid it on, into the curve of the basin. Barbara brought the apples, cut up in white fresh slices, and slid them into the round. Mrs. Holabird folded over the edges, gathered up the linen cloth in her hands, tied it tightly with a string, and Barbara disappeared with it behind the damask screen, where a puff of steam went up in a minute that told the pudding was in. Then Mrs. Holabird went into the pantry-closet and washed her hands, that never really came to need more than a finger-bowl could do for them, and Barbara carried after her the board and its etceteras, and the red cloth was drawn on again, and there was nothing, but a low, comfortable bubble in the chimney-corner to tell of house-wifery or dinner.

”I wish it had lasted longer,” said Miss Elizabeth. ”I am afraid I shall feel like company again now.”

”I am ashamed to tell you what I came for,” said Madam Pennington.

”It was to ask about a girl. Can I do anything with Winny Lafferty?”

”I wish you could,” said Mrs. Holabird, benevolently.

”She needs doing with” said Barbara.

”Your having her would be different from our doing so,” said Mrs.

Holabird. ”I often think that one of the tangles in the girl-question is the mistake of taking the rawest specimens into families that keep but one. With your Lucy, it might be the very making of Winny to go to you.”

”The 'next' for her, as Ruth would say,” said Barbara.