CHAPTER XVI
IN OLIVE’S KITCHEN
Olive went from the kitchen to the front door and received Zelda, all aglow from a rapid walk through the cold crisp November air.
“It’s the wrong time, of course,” said Zelda. “I’m always coming at the wrong time.”
“It’s always the right time,” declared Olive. “But you’ll have to excuse me for a few minutes. This is Thanksgiving Day and my headquarters are in the kitchen. There’s a new magazine or two—help yourself.”
“I’m not using your house as a free reading-room. I dodged church, so I could come and see you. Let me come out and talk. I like your clothes,”—and she put aside her wraps, surveying Olive admiringly.
“Come on, then. I’m making bread,”—and Olive led the way to the kitchen.
“She’s making bread, after all the glory of her début! It’s just like the interviews with great artists that we read in the newspapers. They’re always planting garden-seed or canning fruit, when the reporter calls.”
“If I were you, I shouldn’t refer to last night, after the trick you played on me. You carried it all off with such a rush! I don’t know yet how I came to let you do it.”
“You shouldn’t talk that way to your poor sick cousin. My throat is still very painful,”—and Zelda put up her hand and coughed desperately.
“That will do, thank you! You can’t stay in the kitchen unless you’ll be good.”
Olive’s kitchen was, as she said herself, the best room in the house. Her own paint brush had made it white, and table, range, draining boards were up to date. It was a model kitchen, according to Olive’s own ideas, which were so attractive that shortly after her return from college she had written them down in a series of articles for a paper devoted to the interests of women. Pretty things do not cost any more than ugly ones, she held; and there was no reason why the piano should not be kept in the kitchen, if its owner could use it there to the best advantage.
“I hate to give up a single thing,” Olive had declared to Zelda, “except blacking the stove. I’d like to draw the line there.”
“I wish Polly knew how to make a kitchen look like this,—or that I did! May I sit here? Go on now and talk. Aren’t you afraid of mussing your apron?”
Olive was rolling up her sleeves, which she had pulled down before answering the bell. She wore the costume of her teaching office—a blue and white cotton dress. She tied on a white apron, at which Zelda exclaimed mockingly.
“It’s in your honor, Lady Zee; and you know that a soiled gingham apron can’t get any more soileder than a white one.”
“You look mighty useful, Olive Merriam, considering how frivolous you were last night. I have a new glory now,—I’m Olive Merriam’s cousin. I expected to find a line of carriages at the door when I came, but I suppose they’re afraid to come on a holiday. What are you doing to those pans? Butter? I didn’t know you had to do that. I wonder if Polly knows! Hers always burn on the bottom, but I let it go because it’s better burnt than underdone. As I was saying, you certainly made Papa Schmidt’s opera go tremendously.”
“I oughtn’t really to speak to you. I forgot in my joy at seeing you that I had resolved to give you up forever. If I hadn’t had baking to do, I should have gone to bed and stayed in bed all day. You have put me in a nice box, haven’t you? I might have had some friends if you hadn’t played that trick on me.”
She turned, balancing a symmetrical ball of dough in one hand, and leaned against the kitchen table.
“You look perfectly charming in that make-up,” remarked Zelda, composedly. “And with that strange object in your hand you might pose as Liberty delighting the world. What were you saying? Oh, yes! You are going to cast me off and be done with me.” And then, as though speaking with a great effort, and clasping her hands at her throat to ease its pain: “My throat isn’t really strong yet. The little I did last night must have strained it. So don’t harass me!”
“I’d like to laugh at you, but I can’t. Everybody thinks I persuaded you to let me take the chief part in the opera to put myself before the public. I’m ashamed of myself! I ought to have refused to go ahead, when I saw that you were making me,—as they say in books,—your plaything. If I had been known to anybody it would have been different; but as it was—”
She bent down with the bread pan and Zelda opened the oven door for her.
“Polly always slams the door. Isn’t that right?”
“No, it’s noisy; and it doesn’t do the bread any good.”
“Such wisdom! I must tell Polly that. Now, what are you going to do? I suppose I ought to go. Aunt Julia’s neuralgia is very bad, and I must go to see her. Uncle Rodney and father and I are going there for dinner—a real Hoosier Thanksgiving dinner.”
“I haven’t forgiven you yet, but you may stay here and watch me bake a pie, if you like.”
“Pie! How exciting! There’s a rolling-pin in that. Let me do the rolling. I’ve always been crazy to work a roller and Polly won’t let me!”
“Well, there’s another apron in the closet. You may get that and put it on. It’s effective, too,” she added, as Zelda drew the apron over her short walking skirt and tied the strings at her waist. “I don’t think I can ever believe you again, after yesterday; but assuming that you sometimes tell the truth, tell me, honestly, did you ever make a pie?”
“Humiliating though it be, I must confess that I never, never did,” replied Zelda. “It’s the rolling that I’m interested in. Where do you keep the machine you do it with?”
“We are going to make this pie in a perfectly orderly manner. The rolling-pin comes in later; but we put all the things handy we’re going to need. You can weigh the butter, if you will be good. And you may measure the flour if you won’t spill it on the floor. Now you may work this up into dough. You’re doing splendidly.”
Olive sat down and mingled a lecture on pastry-cooking with a discussion of the opera of the evening before, until she was ready to intrust Zelda with the rolling-pin. The bell rang as Zelda seized the coveted implement and set to work.
“The postman, no doubt; you keep things going, while I answer the bell,”—and Olive ran away.
She was gone several minutes, and came back a little flushed from her encounter.
“Letters?” asked Zelda, without turning round.
“No,” said Olive. “It was a caller.”
“Well, you got rid of her pretty quickly, I must say.”
“It wasn’t her; it was a him,” said Olive, inspecting Zelda’s work.
“Why didn’t you bring him in?” asked Zelda.
“I didn’t think he would be any help about the pie, so I sent him off.”
“Name, please?” and Zelda wheeled about, holding the rolling-pin poised between her hands.
“It was Mr. Balcomb. You needn’t look at me that way. He came on an errand.”
“Did some one send him with a note; or does he deliver parcels? I should think he would make a capital boy to deliver parcels,—he’s so sudden-like!”
“I don’t think you’re fair to him,” said Olive. “He’s a poor young man who has his own way to make.”
“I’m sorry, Cousin Olive, but he doesn’t look pathetic to me. I don’t want to seem to be meddling, but that young man irritates me beyond any words.”
“You’ll never get it rolled out thin if you don’t keep right on,” said Olive.
Zelda laughed and bore down heavily on the dough.
“Please forgive me—please, Cousin Olive; but Mr. Balcomb makes me think of pie crust some way—or pie crust makes me think of him. I rarely eat pie, so I’m not overworked thinking of him. He’s so thin and crisp. You could roll him out and make a nice apple tart of him. Why, Olive Merriam!”
Tears had sprung suddenly to Olive’s eyes, and Zelda dropped the rolling-pin and ran to her.
“You poor dear, I wouldn’t hurt you for anything in the world. Tell me you forgive me!”
“I’m silly, and I know you’ll think things—go on now with that crust—there are the pans all ready—but Mr. Balcomb has been very kind to me. He has taken me to the theater sometimes, and sent me things. So I think you’re not fair to him.”
“Well,” said Zelda, “if he’s nice to you there isn’t anything else to be said—not a word. Do you drop it over the pan like that,—no, let me have the knife and I’ll cut it. So!”—and she set down the pan and viewed its lining of crust with satisfaction.
“He came,” said Olive, with dignity, “to say how sorry he was to have to run off last night, but that he was called away on an urgent business matter and had to go down to his office to meet some people who had come from out of town unexpectedly. And I told him it was all right and please to go away, as I was busy.”
“He certainly says some funny things,” Zelda went on, palliatingly, “and he was fine in the show. His antics were as good as any professional’s.”
“He can be awfully funny,” said Olive. “And now we’ll make some tarts out of the rest of that crust and use up some canned raspberries that are there on the shelf.”
“I’m so very sorry I spoke that way about tarts,” said Zelda, with real contrition; “but we’ll call them the tarts of peace.”
“I wasn’t a bit hurt,” pleaded Olive, “and I don’t care what you say; only he has been kind.”
“Then let his life be spared!” said Zelda, dramatically. “And now let’s make tarts, though we be hanged for it.”
A little later, while they awaited results from the oven and again discussed the opera, Olive remarked naïvely:
“I suppose you have your reasons for treating him that way.”
“Whom, what way?”
“Mr. Leighton; you snub him every chance you get.”
“Well, he ought to be snubbed; he thinks that because he and uncle are good friends that he’s my assistant guardian or something like that. This old-family-friend business makes me tired.”
“Well, of course, Captain Pollock isn’t an old family friend.”
“No; that’s one thing in his favor; and another is that he’s amusing. I like men to be amusing.”
“I suppose they are better so!”
“You amazing child, it’s the whole thing; don’t you know that?”
“I know that you don’t think anything of the kind, Zelda Dameron,” declared Olive.