American Cookery: Thanksgiving Menus and Recipes, - [i have read the book a hundred times TXT] 📗

If Anne heard, she made no reply, she was exploring.

Downstairs, a wide hall occupied a central third of the house; it was well lighted by the windows each side the front door, and by double doors of glass, which opened on to the back porch. On one side the hall were kitchen and pantry, nearly equal in size, and glistening with white paint, aluminum, and blue and white porcelain. With a hasty glance over these treasures, to which she was coming back, Anne stepped out into the hall again, and around to the front of the winding staircase, and entered what she knew at once for the "owner's bedroom." There were windows on two sides, as this was a front room, and each broad sill bore its own pot of ferns. The furniture here was all old-fashioned, of some dark wood that had been rubbed to a satin finish, the floor was of plain surface, with braided mats, and a blue and white counterpane provided the only bit of drapery in the room. Anne's bright head nodded with satisfaction. Here was character; to win Aunt Susan's respect would be no light task, her personal and intimate belongings showed an austere sense of values and an almost surgical cleanliness. Yet Aunt Susan could not be a martinet; her hall, furnished for other people, showed due regard for their comfort; the living room, which took the entire western side of the cottage, bore unmistakable signs of much occupancy, with wide and varied interests. A set of dark shelves, at the lower end, held china, and suggested that one might also eat at the refectory table, which was furnished as a desk and held a few books, many writing materials, and a foreign-looking lamp. There was also a piano, well littered with music, a sewing bag thrown down upon a cretonned window seat, and the generous fireplace was flanked by two huge baskets, one heaped with magazines, the other a perfectly round mound of yellow fur, which suddenly took form and life as a yellow tabby cat fastened hopeful topaz eyes upon them, blinked away a brief disappointment, and then yawned with ennui.

"His missie left him all alone," said Anne, bending to stroke the smooth head. "What's upstairs, Burt?"

"Go and look, I'll take your place with the Admiral until you come back," offered Burt, and at sound of his name the yellow cat jumped out and began rubbing against a convenient table leg. Anne found them in the same relative positions when she returned from her inspection of the upper floor.

"Your Aunt Susan must use it for sewing," she told Burt, dreamily. "With that big skylight—it could be a studio, couldn't it?"

"It is," Burt informed her. "Aunt Susan is an artist—with her needle. She gives, or gave, dressmaking lessons, in her idle moments. She gave up dressmaking, when she bought this house and settled here, but now she teaches the daughters of her old customers, they come out in automobiles every Wednesday, in winter. Saturday afternoons she has some of the young girls in the village, here,—without price—and without taste, too, some of them! And Nan, I hate to mention it, but—Aunt Susan is a pretty good cook, too!"

"Feed the brute!" quoted Nan, with a gay laugh. "Will the Admiral drink condensed milk?"

Mrs. Brown came over with her blueberry pie as Burt was summoned to luncheon. She surveyed the table, which Nan had laid in the kitchen, and then the Admiral, who was making his toilette in a thorough manner that suggested several courses, with outspoken approval.

"My, I wish Susan Winchester could pop in this minute. You found the prepared flour, and all—baked 'em on the griddle! Wa'n't that cute! I never did see an omelet like that except from Susan Winchester's own hands, and she learned from a Frenchwoman she used to sew with. Some folks can pick up every useful trick they see."

Turning to Burt, she continued:

"With all the new fangle-dangles of these days, women voting and all, you're a lucky boy to have found an old-fashioned girl!"

"I know it," said Burt, brazenly, but he did not meet Anne's astonished eyes. "My girl has learned the best of the new accomplishments, without losing what was worth keeping of the old."

Anne's judgment told her it was a good luncheon—no better than she served herself at home, though. She stared at her own slim, capable fingers. Was she domestic, after all?

"We've been looking at apartments in the city," Burt went on—"apartments in a hotel, you know.—Try the omelet, Mrs. Brown—Nan's don't fall flat as soon as other omelets do.—But we haven't found what really appeals to us."

"I should think not," declared Mrs. Brown, vigorously. "I always say a person hasn't a spark of originality that will go and live in a coop just like hundreds of others, all cut to the same pattern. Look at your Aunt Susan, now. This house belonged to old Joe Potter, he built it less'n ten years ago an Mis' Potter she had it the way she wanted it, and that was like the house she lived in when she was a girl, little, tucked-up rooms, air-tight stoves, a tidy on every chair, and she made portières out of paper beads that tickled 'em both silly—yes, and tickled everybody in the ear that went through 'em, though that wan't what I meant to say. When she died, Joe wouldn't live here, said he wouldn't be so homesick for Julia in another house, this one was full of her. So, your Aunt Susan bought it, and what did she do?

"She knocked out partitions, took down fire-boards, threw out a good parlor set and lugged in tables and chairs from all over, put big panes of glass where there was little ones—in some places, she did, and only the good angels and Susan Winchester knows why she didn't change 'em all, they're terrible mean to wash—made the front hall into a setting room and the parlor into a bedroom, got two bathrooms and no dining room—well, to make a long story short, this house is now Susan Winchester. Anybody that knows Susan would know it was her house if they see it in China.

"Did you learn to keep house with your mother?"

The transition was so abrupt that Anne started. "I—my aunt brought me up—and nine cousins," she answered. "My aunt is as unlike Burt's as you can imagine, but just as dear and good. She had a big family, and there was never time enough to have her home as she wanted it—so she thought—and I thought so, too—but yet—Aunt Milly's home was always full of happy children, and, perhaps, that's what she really wanted, more than dainty furnishings or a spotless kitchen."

"Folks, mostly, get what they want, even if they don't know it," confirmed Mrs. Brown. "Look at the Admiral, here. He don't want to come over and live with me, same as Susan meant he should. He wants to stay right in his own home, and have his meals and petting same as usual, and here you come along today and give them to him. Trouble is, folks don't always know what it is they want."

When Mrs. Brown went back to her own dinner, she left Anne with something to think about. Washing the dishes in Aunt Susan's white sink, which was fitted to that very purpose, drying them upon a rack which held every dish apart from its neighbors, and, finally, polishing the quaintly shaped pieces upon Aunt Susan's checked towel, which remained dry and spotless; opening every drawer and cupboard to see that all was left in the dainty order she had found there, Anne had a clear vision of the blue and silver furnishings at the Kensington. What had she told Burt: "It doesn't look like either of us"?—while Aunt Susan's home—

"Burt," she called, "come and answer this question. Did you come to Byrnton instead of Branton on purpose?"

"What's this?" said Burt. "Cross-examination?"

"It's an examination, surely, but I won't be cross," replied Anne, with a rare dimple. "You must answer my question truly."

"Yes, Your Honor," said Burt. "I did, Your Honor."

"Did you know your Aunt Susan wouldn't be home?"

"Our Aunt Susan," corrected Burt.—"No, Your Honor—that is, I thought—"

"You knew she was going to California?"

"Yes, Your Honor."

"This summer?"

"I didn't know exactly when—honestly, Nan, I did want you to meet her."

"Why?"'

"I knew you'd like the way she keeps house. I didn't realize that the house could speak for itself, without her.—You do like it, Nan?"

"I don't have to answer questions, because I'm the Judge," Nan told him. "I'll ask you one more. Do you want me to ask you to take this cottage, for us, in the fall, and stay in it until Aunt Susan comes back?"

"Not unless Your Honor pleases."

"Case dismissed, for lack of evidence," said Nan.—"Burt, could we live here?"

"We could. I'll admit it's what I'd like, if you do. The difference in rents would buy gasoline. Could you work here, and keep house, too?"

"I can if I'm smart," answered Nan, soberly. "I wonder if I'm smart."

"Dear," said Burt. "What have you done since you came to New York but work and keep house, too, in less convenient quarters than this, and with no one to help you—no good husband like me—?"

"That's so!" she turned a radiant face upon him.

"If we like, we can begin another home, of our very own, when Aunt Susan wants hers back," Burt smiled quizzically. "No one else's house would suit you for always, Nan. Ask me why."

"Why?"

"Because," said Burt in triumph, "personality, like the measles, will out!"