She went out and presently returned, standing at the doorway. "He is
still asleep. Would you like to see him? Only"--she put her fingers on
her lips--"you must be very, very quiet."
He followed her into the next room and looked about him shyly,
recognizing that it was Miss Anne's own bedroom; and there, lying in a
little cot beside the big bed, he saw the sleeping child, his brown face
flushed with fever. He had a curly shock of black hair and well formed
features. An old woolly lamb nose to nose with him shared his pillow.
Aristide drew from his pocket a Teddy bear, and, having asked Miss
Anne's permission with a glance, laid it down gently on the coverlid.
His eyes were wet when they returned to the parlour. So were Miss
Anne's. The Teddy bear was proof of the simplicity of his faith in her.
After a while, conscious of hunger, he rose to take leave. He must be
getting back to St. Albans. But might he be permitted to come back later
in the afternoon? Miss Anne reddened. It outraged her sense of
hospitality to send a guest away from her house on a three-mile walk for
food. And yet----
"Mr. Pujol," she said bravely, "I would ask you to stay to luncheon if I
had anything to offer you. But I am single handed, and, with Jean's
illness, I haven't given much thought to housekeeping. The woman who
does some of the rough work won't be back till six. I hate to let you go
all those miles--I am so distressed----"
"But, mademoiselle," said Aristide. "You have some bread. You have
water. It has been a banquet many a day to me, and this time it would
be the most precious banquet of all."
"I can do a little better than that," faltered Miss Anne. "I have plenty
of eggs and there is bacon."
"Eggs--bacon!" cried Aristide, his bright eyes twinkling and his hands
going up in the familiar gesture. "That is superb. _Tiens!_ you shall
not do the cooking. You shall rest. I will make you an _omelette au
lard_--_ah!_"--he kissed the tips of his fingers--"such an omelette as
you have not eaten since you were in France--and even there I doubt
whether you have ever eaten an omelette like mine." His soul simmering
with omelette, he darted towards the door. "The kitchen--it is this
way?"
"But, Mr. Pujol----!" Miss Anne laughed, protestingly. Who could be
angry with the vivid and impulsive creature?
"It is the room opposite Jean's--not so?"
She followed him into the clean little kitchen, half amused, half
flustered. Already he had hooked off the top of the kitchen range. "Ah!
a good fire. And your frying-pan?" He dived into the scullery.
"Please don't be in such a hurry," she pleaded. "You will have made the
omelette before I've had time to lay the cloth, and it will get cold.
Besides, I want to learn how to do it."
"_Tres bien_," said Aristide, laying down the frying-pan. "You shall see
how it is made--the omelette of the universe."
So he helped Miss Anne to lay the cloth on the gate-legged oak table in
the parlour and to set it out with bread and butter and the end of a
tinned tongue and a couple of bottles of stout. After which they went
back to the little kitchen, where in a kind of giggling awe she watched
him shred the bacon and break the eggs with his thin, skilful fingers
and perform his magic with the frying-pan and turn out the great golden
creation into the dish.
"Now," said he, pulling her in his enthusiasm, "to table while it is
hot."
Miss Anne laughed. She lost her head ever so little. The days had been
drab and hopeless of late and she was still young; so, if she felt
excited at this unhoped for inrush of life and colour, who shall blame
her? The light sparkled once more in her eyes and the pink of her
naturally florid complexion shone on her cheek as they sat down to
table.
"It is I who help it," said Aristide. "Taste that." He passed the plate
and waited, with the artist's expectation for her approval.
"It's delicious."
It was indeed the perfection of omelette, all its suave juiciness
contained in film as fine as goldbeater's skin.
"Yes, it's good." He was delighted, childlike, at the success of his
cookery. His gaiety kept the careworn woman in rare laughter during the
meal. She lost all consciousness that he was a strange man plunged down
suddenly in the midst of her old maidish existence--and a strange man,
too, who had once behaved in a most outrageous fashion. But that was
ever the way of Aristide. The moment you yielded to his attraction he
made you feel that you had known him for years. His fascination
possessed you.
"Miss Anne," said he, smoking a cigarette, at her urgent invitation, "is
there a poor woman in Beverly Stoke with whom I could lodge?"