The Indifference of Juliet Part 10

"Good. Now, if you fellows will come back to the fire and have a pipeful of talk we shall not be missed. In this house on ordinary occasions we reverse the order of after-dinner privileges--the men retire to the atmosphere of the sofa-pillows, and the women--I'm not allowed to tell what they do. But after remaining discreetly out of sight for some little time, during which faint sounds as of the rattle of china penetrate through closed doors, they reappear, pleasantly flushed and full of a sort of relieved joy."

"I know what I wish," said Roger Barnes, looking back from the dining-room doorway at young Mrs. Robeson; "I wish that when the dishes are all ready you would let me know. I should like nothing better than to have a dish-towel at them. I know all about it--my mother taught me how."

He looked so precisely as if he meant it, and the glance he sent past Juliet at Rachel Redding was so suggestive of his dislike to be separated for the coming hour from the feminine portion of the household, that his hostess answered promptly: "Of course you may. We never refuse an offer like that. We will try you--on promise of good behaviour."

XII.--THE BACHELOR BEGS A DISH-TOWEL

When the door closed on the three Juliet produced from somewhere two ap.r.o.ns--attractive affairs on the pinafore order--one of which she slipped upon Rachel, the other donned herself.

"These are my kitchen party-ap.r.o.ns," she said gayly, noting how the pretty garment became the girl, "calculated to impress the masculine mind with the charm of domesticity in women. The doctor needs a little ill.u.s.trated lesson of the sort. Life in boarding-houses isn't adapted to encourage a man in the belief that real comfort is to be found anywhere outside of a bachelor's club."

Before he was called the doctor forsook a half-smoked cigar and the seductive hollows of Anthony's easiest chair and marched briskly out to the kitchen.

"You see I distrust you," he announced, putting in his head at the door.

"I'm afraid you will get them all done without me."

"Not a bit of it. Here you are," and Juliet tied a big white ap.r.o.n about a large-sized waist. "Here's your towel. No, don't touch the gla.s.s; a man is too unconscious of his strength."

"A surgeon?" demurred Rachel softly, from over her steaming dishpan.

"Thank you, Miss Redding," said the doctor, smiling.

"Ah, how stupid of me," Juliet made amends swiftly. "Miss Redding remembers that when I got my telephone message to-night I told her that the most distinguished young specialist in the city was coming here to dinner. A hand trained to such delicate tasks as those of surgery--here, Dr. Roger Barnes, forgive me, and wipe my most precious goblets."

"You'll have my nerves unsteady with such speeches as that," said he, but he accepted the trust. He held the goblets and the other daintily cut and engraved pieces of gla.s.s with evident pleasure in the task.

Meanwhile Juliet and Rachel made rapid work of the greater part of the dishes, handling thin china with the dexterity of housewives who love their work--and their china. Talk and laughter flowed brightly through it all, and when the doctor had finished his gla.s.s he looked disappointed at seeing not much left to do. At the moment Rachel was scrubbing and sc.r.a.ping a big baking-dish, portions of whose surface strongly resisted her efforts, in spite of previous soaking. The a.s.sistant, looking about him for new worlds to conquer, fell upon this dish.

"Here, here," said he, "let me have it. I'll use on it some of the unconscious strength Mrs. Robeson credits me with."

But Rachel clung to the dish. "Proper housekeepers," she averred, "always say 'That's all, thank you,' as soon as the china is done, and finish the pots and kettles after the guest has gone back to pleasanter things."

"I see. Did you ever have a man for dish-wiper before?"

"Never a surgeon," admitted Miss Redding.

"Then you don't appreciate the fact that a man likes to do big things which make the most show and get the credit for them."

He took the dish away from her by a dexterous little twist in which conscious strength certainly a.s.serted itself. Rachel, laughing, with a dash of colour in cheeks which were normally of dark ivory tints, accepted the dish-towel he handed her.

"Hallo, there," cried Wayne Carey's voice from the door. "You're having more fun out here than we are in there, and that's not fair. The lord of the manor is getting so chesty over the delights of a country home in a February s...o...b..nk that he's becoming heavy company."

"No room for you here," returned the doctor, removing with a flourish the last candied sugar lump from the bottom of the big dish, and beginning to swash about vigorously in the hot water. "We do something besides talk out here; we work. Our kitchen is so small we have to waste no time in steps; as we dry the things we chuck them straight into their places."

Suiting the action to the word he caught up a shining cake-tin and cast it straight at Carey. That gentleman dodged, but Anthony caught it, performed upon it an imitation of the cymbals, then turned about and laid it in a nest of similar tins upon a shelf in an open closet.

"Ah, but I'm well trained," he boasted.

"If you were you wouldn't put it away wet," observed Rachel slyly.

Anthony withdrew the tin, wiped it with much solicitude, and replaced it.

"These little technicalities are beyond me," he apologised. "Your real athlete in kitchen work is your scientific man. See him dry that bean-pot with the gla.s.s-towel. Now, I know better than that."

"Go away, all of you," commanded the mistress of the place. "Go back to the fire and we'll join you. If you are very good we'll bring you a special treat by-and-by."

"That settles it," said the doctor, and led the retreat, but not without a backward glance at the little kitchen.

Juliet had gone into the dining-room with a trayful of gla.s.s and silver.

Rachel Redding was plunging half a dozen white towels into a pan of steaming water. Barnes stood an instant, staring hard at the slender figure in the white pinafore, the round young arms gleaming in the lamplight--then he turned to follow the others. There are some pictures which linger long in a man's memory; why, he can hardly tell. With all his varied experiences Dr. Roger Barnes had never before discovered how attractive a background a well-kept kitchen makes for a beautiful woman, so that she be there mistress of the situation. Long after he had gone back to the fire his absent eyes, while the others talked, were studying the--to him--unaccustomed and singularly charming scene he had just left in the kitchen.

When Juliet and Rachel came in at length they found a plan afoot for their entertainment. Wayne Carey was standing at the window showing cause why the whole party should go out and coast upon the hill near by.

"You admit," he argued with Anthony, "that you know where we can get a pair of bobs--and if you can't I'll bribe some of those youngsters out there to let us have theirs. The storm has stopped; the boys have swept off the whole hill, I should judge, by the way their track shines again under the moonlight. I haven't had a good coast since I left college."

He turned to Juliet. "Will you go?" he asked coaxingly.

"Of course we will," promised Juliet. "Tony wants to go--he's just enjoying making you tease. As for the doctor----"

"If my right hand has not forgot her cunning," he agreed.

In ten minutes the party was off. A young matron of five months' standing is not so materially changed from the girl she used to be that she can fail to be the gayest of company, perhaps with the more zest that the old good times seem a bit far away already and she is glad to bring them back.

As for the real girl of the party, in this case it chanced to be a country la.s.s who had been away to school and half-way through college, had been brought home by love and duty to some elderly people who needed her, and had known many hours of stifled longing for the sort of companionship with which she had grown happily familiar.

Matron and maid--they were a pair for whose sakes the men who were with them gladly made slaves of themselves to give them an evening of glorious outdoor fun--and at small sacrifice.

"What a night!" exulted the doctor, striding up the long hill beside Rachel Redding breathing deep. "I'm thanking all my lucky stars that they led my path across Anthony Robeson's to-night. I've been intending to come out here ever since he was married--and might not have done it for another six months if I hadn't got started. He'll have all he wants of me now.

It's the most delightful spot I've been in for many moons."

"It is a dear little home," agreed Rachel warmly. "Mrs. Robeson would make the most commonplace house in the world one where everybody would want to come."

"That's evident. Yet, somehow, knowing her well as a girl, I never should have suspected just those home-making qualities. You didn't know her then, I suppose? She was a girl other girls liked heartily, and men enthusiastically--one of the 'I'll be a good friend, but don't come too near' sort, you know. But she was very fond of travel and change, ready for everything in the way of sport--and, well, I certainly never saw her before in anything resembling an ap.r.o.n of any description. What a delightful article of attire an ap.r.o.n is, anyhow. I think I never appreciated it before to-night."

"That's because you never saw one of Mrs. Robeson's ap.r.o.ns. Hers are not like other people's."

"She makes hers poetic, does she?"

"She certainly does--even the ones for baking and sweeping. Not ruffled or beribboned, but cut with an eye to attractiveness, and always of becoming colour."