Miss Carter fished out the last doughnut from the kettle of bubbling
fat, laid it on a sheet of brown paper, and sprinkled it with powdered
sugar.
“They’re extra good this time!” she said to herself.
She stood looking down at them. There they lay in rows and rows,
feathery light, richly crisp and brown.
“Oh, my!” she cried. “I do wish I could eat just one!”
But even one doughnut would be treachery to Maude.
“You’ll ruin your figure and your digestion by eating between meals,
Auntie Sue,” Maude had said. “Promise me you won’t!”
Miss Carter had refused to promise, but she had said that she would try,
and she did try. She turned her back upon this temptation, with a faint
sigh, and gave a last glance round the kitchen.
Nothing more for her to do here! It was as spotless as a chemist’s
laboratory. Indeed, that was what Maude wanted it to be like. She said
that a kitchen ought to be a home laboratory, and she wanted it all
white and bleak and stern.
Even a high white stool had been provided for Miss Carter. She found it
very convenient for many purposes, but she _did_ like a rocking-chair,
and she had apologetically brought one down from the attic. To please
Maude she had painted it white, so that it also had a somewhat severe
look; but when there was nobody else in the house, Miss Carter always
got out that nice, downy old red silk cushion from the hall cupboard,
put it into the chair, and sat down and rocked comfortably while she
shelled peas or hulled berries, and so on.
The cushion always disappeared before Maude got home, because it would
distress her. If she were to see it, she would surely go out the very
next day and buy a scientific, up-to-date one--perhaps one like those
hard, shiny things that dentists have in their chairs.
Maude disapproved of old, soft, comfortable things, and called them
“slipshod.” She hated all that was not exact and efficient. It was
misery for her to hear Miss Carter talk about putting in “a pinch” of
cinnamon, instead of one-eighth of a teaspoonful, and the mention of “a
lump of butter the size of an egg” appalled her.
She had bought Miss Carter glass measuring cups, quart measures, pint
measures, scales, and sets of spoons of all sizes; and yet, in the
making of these very doughnuts, Miss Carter had used that old blue
teacup for measuring, and she had put in many “pinches” of things. It
made her feel guilty to think of it, but she really couldn’t help it. At
forty--
Now there was another treacherous thought! Maude never allowed her to be
forty.
“Never think of yourself as forty,” Maude often said, “and you won’t
feel forty.”
But in her secret heart Miss Carter wished that she could just
comfortably be forty. It seemed to her a remarkably nice age to be.
Indeed, she felt proud of it. When she went to buy a hat, and the
saleswoman said something nice about her splendid head of hair, Miss
Carter liked to say:
“It’s not bad for a woman of forty, if I do say it myself!”
She didn’t say this any more, because it worried Maude, but there were
times when she defiantly thought it. It gave so much zest to life. For
instance, that evening when they came back from the picnic, and every
one else was so tired, and she wasn’t, one bit, even if she was for--
As she left the kitchen and the tantalizing aroma of the doughnuts,
another perfume came floating in at the open front door. It was the
scent of those dear little pinks and verbenas in the garden.
“I guess I’ll go out and sit on the porch for half an hour,” thought
Miss Carter.
So out she went, and the very sight of the garden on this summer day
made her so happy that tears came to her eyes. Maude had improved the
house a good deal, but she had been satisfied to leave the garden to her
aunt, and it was just as it had always been--a gay, careless sort of
garden, with a lawn shaded by fine old trees, and a rebellious crowd of
bright, old-fashioned flowers. The sweet alyssum was foaming over the
borders of the largest bed and marching down to the path, just as it had
done when she was a little girl. There were the rosebushes that her
mother had planted, and the privet hedge that had seemed so tall and
dark and impenetrable to a child’s vision. It was indeed a dear and
wonderful old garden!
With a sigh of content, she sank into a chair--and almost at once jumped
up again. She mustn’t sit out here in her gingham house dress, wearing
these old shoes! Somebody might see her, and Maude would never get over
it if anybody should see her aunt looking really comfortable; so she
went back to the house, and up to her own room.
This was, in Miss Carter’s eyes, the most charming room in all the
world. The things in it were old, and some of them were not very
beautiful, but she liked them--all of them, even the two old calendars
on the wall and the French clock that had not ticked for years and
years. The dark shades were pulled down against the afternoon sun, and a
limpid green light filled the room. The mahogany bureau shone like dark
water, and the big four-post bed, with its old-fashioned bolster and the
ruffled spread, looked exquisitely restful.
“Upon my word,” said Miss Carter to herself, “I believe I could take
forty winks! Such a hot afternoon! And there’s nothing much I ought to
do for the next half hour.”
Now the naps of housekeepers are different from the naps of other
people. There is always a faint feeling of guilt about them, no matter
how much work has been done, or how well earned the rest--always a
consciousness of all sorts of other things that ought to be done. Even
Miss Carter, whose house was a model of cleanliness and order, had this
feeling of guilt, and was quite human enough to enjoy her nap all the
more for it.
She settled herself comfortably on the sofa, and closed her eyes. One of
the shades flapped softly in the breeze, and she thought that it was
like a sail, and that she was floating off somewhere--floating off--
The telephone bell rang.
Miss Carter sat up, frowned a little, yawned, and went downstairs; and
over the wire came the voice that was dearer to her than any other voice
in the world.
“Auntie Sue, darling, would it bother you if I were to bring some one
home for dinner?”
“Bother me?” cried Miss Carter. “Why, of course not, child! You can
bring a dozen people, any time you’ve a mind to!”
“I just thought I’d ask Mr. Rhodes,” said Maude.
A very odd sort of feeling came over Miss Carter. She smiled graciously,
as people do who wish to hide their emotions from the watchful
telephone, and said:
“I’ll be very glad to see him, child.”
But this was not quite true. She had never heard of Mr. Rhodes before,
yet she had been expecting him for five years, ever since Maude was
eighteen. She had known that somebody was bound to come and take Maude
away, and this was the man--she was sure of it! The way Maude said she
would “ask Mr. Rhodes” was enough.
“Well, why not?” Miss Carter demanded sternly of herself. “You couldn’t
expect a girl like Maude t-to s-stay--Pshaw, I’ve left my handkerchief
upstairs!”
She went upstairs hastily, and lay down on the sofa again for a little
while, but she did not go to sleep.
After awhile she got up and washed her face in cold water, and began to
get ready for Maude’s guest. Naturally Maude would expect her to wear
the _crêpe de Chine_ dress she had given her aunt as a birthday present,
so Miss Carter opened the cupboard door, and there it was--a dark and
elegant stranger, hanging there with a sort of disdainful air among the
sensible, sturdy linens and cottons.
She brought it out, took off her loose, comfortable house dress, and
struggled into the _crêpe de Chine_.
“A slip-on-dress,” Maude had called it.
“A squirm-on dress, I should say!” thought Miss Carter.
She did not like herself in that dress. She looked at her image in the
mirror, and she did not like it. A sturdy little woman she was, straight
as an arrow. Her face, with its small, clear, regular features and
healthy color, and those very blue eyes of hers, was quite as pretty as
it had been fifteen years ago--perhaps even more so, because of the
patience and the compassion she had learned; but she had long ago
forgotten to think about being pretty. She noted nothing except the
dress, which didn’t suit her.
“Specially designed upon long, slender lines,” Maude had said.
“And I’m not!” thought Miss Carter. “What’s the sense in a dress being
long and slender, if the person inside it is short and”--she
paused--“and roly-poly,” she added firmly. “That’s what I am!”
She covered up all this magnificence with a big checked apron, and went
down into the kitchen again. The dinners that she prepared for Maude
every night were so good that it was scarcely possible to improve upon
them, but this evening she intended to try. She intended to outdo
herself for Maude’s Mr. Rhodes.
From the garden she picked enough early June peas to make cream-of-pea
soup. The chicken, which she had intended to roast, was not, she
thought, quite large enough for three, so she made it into a fricassee,
with dumplings beyond description. Then she had a dish of wax beans, and
a dish of asparagus, cooked to perfection and seasoned only with plenty
of butter, and potatoes most marvelously fried, and she made fresh
strawberry ice cream. When you consider what it meant to crack ice and
turn the freezer, in that dress with long, tight sleeves and floating
things that hung from the shoulders--
She didn’t dare to take it off, though, for fear of their coming by an
early train, because she knew that even more than a superb dinner Maude
would want to see her aunt in all her glory.
Then she laid the table with her finest tablecloth and her grandmother’s
china, and with every rose in the garden in a bowl in the center. She
really was pleased with the result.