"Here are yer strawberries, ma'm."
Juliet, alone in her little kitchen, ran to the door in dismay. She looked
down at a freckle-faced boy carrying a big basket filled with
strawberry-boxes.
"But my order was for next Wednesday," she said.
"Well, Pa said he cal'lated you'd ruther have 'em when they was at the
best, an' that's now. This hot weather's a dryin' 'em up. May not be any
good ones by Wednesday."
Every housekeeper knows that if there is one thing particularly liable to
happen it is the arrival of fruit for preserving at the most inopportune
moment of the week. It matters little what the excuse of the sender may
be--there is always a sufficient reason why the original date set by the
buyer has been ignored. In this case the strawberries had been engaged
from a neighbour, and Juliet understood at once that she must not refuse
to take them.
She stood looking at the rows of baskets upon the table, when the boy had
placed them there and gone whistling away. She was in the midst of a
flurry of work. It was Saturday, and she was cooking and baking, putting
together various dishes to be used upon the morrow. Mr. Horatio Marcy had
lately returned from abroad. He and Mrs. Dingley were to spend the coming
Sabbath with Juliet and Anthony--the first occasion on which Juliet's
father should be entertained in the house. It was an event of importance,
and his daughter meant to show him several things concerning her fitness
for her present position.
Rachel Redding was not available upon this Saturday morning. Her mother
had been taken seriously ill the night before, and Rachel had sent word
that she could not leave her. Juliet had not minded much, although it was
a day when Rachel's help would have been especially acceptable. As it was,
she had reached a point where her housewifely marshalling of the day's
work was at a critical stage. A cake had been put into the oven. A large
bowl of soup stock had been brought from a cool retreat to have the smooth
coating of fat removed from its surface. Various other dishes, in process
of construction, awaited the skilled touch of the cook.
"I shall have to do them, I suppose," said Mrs. Robeson to herself,
regarding the strawberries with a disapproving eye. "But _why_ they had to
come to-day----"
She went at the strawberries, wishing she had ordered less. They were fine
berries--on top; by degrees, as the boxes lowered, they became less fine.
It seemed desirable to separate the superior from the inferior and treat
them differently. Only the best would do for the delectable preserve which
was to go into glasses and be served on special occasions; the others
could be made into jam less attractive to the eye if hardly less
acceptable to the palate. Juliet was obliged to put down her berry-boxes
every fifth minute to attend to one or other of the various saucepans and
double-boilers upon the little range. Her cheeks grew flushed, for the day
was hot and the kitchen hotter. It must be admitted that her occasional
glance out over the green fields and the woods beyond was a longing one.
The better selection of the berries went into the clear syrup in the
preserving-kettle. Juliet flew to get her glass pots ready. She stopped to
stir something in a saucepan. She thrust some eggs into the small
ice-chest to cool them for the salad dressing soon to be made. She kept
one eye on the clock, for the strawberry preserve had to be timed to a
minute--ten, no more, no less. It was a strenuous hour.
As she dipped up the fourth ladleful of crimson richness--translucent as a
church window--and filled the waiting jar, a peculiar pungent odour
drifted across the fragrance of the strawberries. Juliet dropped her ladle
and pulled open the oven door.
The delicate cake which she had compounded with especial care because it
was Mrs. Dingley's favourite, lay a blackened ruin. Some of it had run
over upon the oven bottom and become a mass of cinders. Juliet jerked the
cake-tin out into the daylight and shut the oven door with a slam.
It was at this unpropitious moment that a figure appeared in the
doorway--a tall, slim figure, in crisp, cool, white linen. A charming
white hat surmounted Mrs. Wayne Carey's carefully ordered hair, a white
parasol in her hands completed a particularly chaste and appropriate
morning toilette for a young woman who had nothing to do with kitchens.
She was regarding with interest the young person at the range. Juliet wore
one of her characteristic working frocks, and the big pinafore which
enveloped it from head to foot was of an attractive design. But the
morning's flurry had set its signs upon her, and the pinafore was not as
immaculate as it had been three hours earlier. Her hair, curling moistly
about her flushed face, had been impatiently pushed back more than once,
and its disorder, while not unpicturesque, was suggestive of a somewhat
perturbed mind. Her hands were pink with strawberry juice. She looked
warm, tired, and--if the truth must be told--at the moment not a little
out of temper. The smile with which she welcomed her friend could hardly
be said to be one of absolute pleasure.
"I'm afraid I've come at the wrong time," said Judith, regretfully. "Did
you just burn something? Too bad. I suppose all young housekeepers do
that. Where's your--assistant?"
"She's not here to-day," said Juliet, ladling up strawberry preserve with
more haste than caution. Her fingers shook a little but she kept her voice
tranquil. "It's all right. A number of things had to be done at once,
that's all. Please don't stay in this hot place. Take off your hat and
find a cool corner somewhere in the house. I'll be in presently."
"I mustn't bother you. I was going to stay for lunch with you, it was so
hot in town, but I mustn't think of it when you're so----"
"Of course you'll stay," said Juliet with decision. "What you see before
you is only the smoke of battle. It will soon clear away. Run off--and
I'll be with you presently. You'll find the late magazines in the
living-room."
Her tone was intended to deceive and it was sufficiently successful.
Judith was anxious to stay. She was also interested in the situation. She
had heard much from Wayne in praise of Juliet's successful housekeeping,
and had seen enough of it herself to be curious about its inner workings.
For the first time she had happened upon a scene which would seem to
indicate that there were phases in this sort of domestic life less ideal
than she was asked to believe. She went back into the coolness and quiet
of the living-room with a full appreciation of the fact that no hot
kitchens ever threatened her own peace of mind.
Juliet finished her strawberry preserve, saw that everything liable to
burn was removed to safe quarters; then deliberately took off her apron
and stole out of the kitchen door. She went swiftly down through the
orchard to the willow-bordered path by the brook; then, out of sight of
everything human, ran several rods down it with a sweep of skirts which
put everything in the bird creation to flight. At a certain pleasant spot
among the willows, sheltered from all possible observation, she paused and
flung herself down upon the warm ground.
But not in any attitude of despair. Neither did she cry tears of vexation
and weariness. She was a healthy girl, with the perfect physical being
whose poise is not upset by so small a matter as a fatiguing morning.
Because a cake had burned, an extra amount of work had had to be conquered
and an unexpected guest had arrived, her nerves were not worn to the
rending point. But, having been reared in the belief that a breath of
outdoors is the great antidote for all physical or mental discomforts born
of confinement indoors, she had acquired a habit of running away from her
cares at any and all times of day in precisely this fashion--and many were
the advantages she had reaped from this somewhat unusual course of
procedure.
Mrs. Anthony Robeson lay upon one side, her arm outstretched, her cheek
pillowed upon her arm. She was drawing long, deep breaths, and looking
lazily off at a stretch of blue sky cleft in the exact centre by one great
graceful elm tree. One would have thought she had forgotten every care in
the world, not to mention the guest from the city waiting expectantly for
her hostess to appear. After ten minutes of this sort of indolence the
figure in the blue and white print dress sat up, clasped both arms about
her knees and remained regarding with half closed eyes the softly
fluttering leaves of the willows along the edge of the brook. The hot
flush died out of her cheeks; the lips whose expression a few minutes
since had indicated self-control under a combination of trying
circumstances, relaxed into their natural sweetness with a tendency toward
mirth; and her whole aspect became that merely of the young athlete
resting from one encounter and preparing herself for another.
At length she rose, shook out her skirts, and said aloud: "Now, Judith
Dearborn Carey, I'm ready to upset your expectations. Since you looked in
at me this morning you've been thinking I wished I hadn't--haven't you?
Well, you may just understand that I don't wish anything of the sort." And
in five minutes more she had walked in upon her guest by way of the front
door, her pretty face serene, her hands full of pink June roses which she
threw in a fragrant mass of beauty into her friend's lap.
"Put those into bowls for me, will you?" she requested. "Arrange them to
suit yourself. Aren't they lovely? I suppose you're getting hungry. In
half an hour you shall be served with a very modest but, I trust, not
insufficient lunch. Would you like hot chocolate or iced tea?"
"Iced tea, by all means," chose Judith, who, being used to the privileges
of selection from a variety of offered foods and beverages, was apt to
want what was not set before her, when at a private table. Juliet
understood this propensity of her friend and slyly took advantage of it.
As it happened, she knew that at the moment she was quite out of
chocolate, but she had counted advisedly upon Judith's choice on a hot
June day, and she smiled to herself as she chopped ice and sliced lemon.
At the end of the half hour, Judith, who found the coolness of the
living-room too delightful to allow her to keep watch of her friend in the
hot kitchen, much as she was tempted to do so, was summoned to an equally
cool dining-room. Upon the bare table, daintily set out upon some of the
embroidered white doilies of Juliet's wedding linen, was a simple lunch of
a character which appealed to the guest's critical appetite in a way which
made her draw a long breath of satisfaction.
"You certainly do have a trick of serving things to make them taste better
than other people's," she acknowledged, glancing from the little platter
of broiled chicken with its bit of parsley to the crisp fruit salad made
up of she knew not what, but presenting an appetising appearance--then
regarding fondly a dish of spinach, pleasingly flanked by thin slices of
boiled egg.
"It's really too hot to eat anything very solid," agreed Juliet with
guile. "Rachel and I have a way of planning our lunches a day or two
ahead, so that the leftovers we use up are not yesterday's but the day
before's, and we remember with surprise how good the original dish was far
back in the past. I wish Anthony could have his midday meal at
home--though perhaps if he did the dinners wouldn't strike him so happily.
Don't you think it's great fun to see a big, hearty man sit down at a
table and look at it with an expression of adoration? Women may deride the
fact as they will, but a healthy body does demand good things to eat, and
shouldn't be blamed for liking them."
"Wayne hasn't much appetite," said Judith, eating away with relish. "He
dislikes the people at our table--sometimes I think that's why he bolts
his food and gets off in such a hurry. By the way, Juliet, are you and
Tony coming in to the Reardons' to-night? Of course you are."
"I suppose we must," admitted Juliet with reluctance. "We have refused a
good many things since we've been here, but I did promise Mrs. Reardon we
would try to come to-night."
The little repast over, Judith offered, with well simulated warmth, to
help her friend with the after work. But Juliet would have none of her.
She sent her guest out into a hammock under the trees, and despatched the
business of putting the little kitchen to rights with the celerity of one
who means to have done with it.
In the middle of the June afternoon Judith awoke from a nap in the hammock
to find her hostess standing laughing beside her, fresh in a thin gown of
flowered dimity.
"Well," yawned Judith, heavily, "I must have gone off to sleep. I was
tired--I am tireder. This is a fatiguing sort of weather--don't you think
so? But you don't look it. And after all that work I found you in! Why
aren't you used up? It _kills_ me to do things in the heat."
Juliet dropped a big blue denim pillow on the ground and sat down upon it
in a flutter of dimity. She lifted a smiling face and said with spirit:
"Last summer I could walk miles over a golf course twice a day and not
mind it in the least. The year before I was most of the time on the river,
rowing till I was as strong as a girl could be. I've had gymnasium work
and fencing lessons and have been brought up to keep myself in perfect
trim by my baths and exercise. What frail thing am I that a little
housework should use me up?"
"Yes--I know--you always did go in for that sort of thing," reflected
Judith, eyeing her companion's fresh colour and bright eyes. "I suppose I
ought, but I never cared for it--I don't mean the baths and all that--of
course any self-respecting woman adores warm baths. I don't like the cold
plunges and showers you always add on."
"Then don't expect the results."
"It isn't everybody who has your energetic temperament. I hate golf,
despise tennis, never rowed a stroke in my life, and could no more keep
house as you are doing than I could fly."
"Let me see," said Juliet demurely, pretending to consider. "What is it
that you do like to do?"
"You know well enough. And little enough of it I can get now with a
husband who never cares to stir." There was a suspicion of bitterness in
Judith's voice. But Juliet, ignoring it, went blithely on:
"I've a strong conviction that one can't be happy without being busy. Now
that I can't keep up my athletic sports I should become a pale
hypochondriac without these housewifely affairs to employ me. I don't like
to embroider. I can't paint china. I'm not a musician. I somehow don't
care to begin to devote myself to clubs in town. I love my books and the
great outdoors--and plenty of action."
"You're a strange girl," was Judith's verdict, getting languidly out of
the hammock, an hour later, after an animated discussion with her friend
on various matters touching on the lives of both. "Either you're a
remarkable actress or you're as contented as you seem to be. I wish I had
your enthusiasm. Everything bores me--Look at this frock, after lying in a
hammock! Isn't white linen the prettiest thing when you put it on and the
most used up when you take it off, of any fabric known to the shops?"
"It is, indeed. But if anybody can afford to wear it it's you, who never
sit recklessly about on banks and fences, but keep cool and correct and
stately and----"
"--discontented. I admit I've talked like a fractious child all day. But
I've had a good time and want to come oftener than I have. May I?"
"Of course you may. Must you go? I'll keep you to dinner and send for
Wayne."
"You're an angel, but I've an engagement for five o'clock, and there's the
Reardons' this evening. You won't forget that? You and Anthony will be
sure to come?"
"I'll not promise absolutely, but I'll see. Mrs. Reardon was so kind as to
leave it open. It's an informal affair, I believe?"
"Informal, but very gorgeous, just the same. She wouldn't give anybody but
you such an elastic invitation as that, and you should appreciate her
eagerness to get you," declared Judith, who cared very much from whom her
invitations came and could never understand her friend's careless attitude
toward the most impressive of them.
Juliet watched her guest go down the street, and waved an affectionate
hand at her as Judith looked back from her seat in the trolley car. "Poor
old Judy," she said to herself. "How glad you are you're not I!--And how
very, very glad I am I'm not you!"
An observation, it must be admitted, essentially feminine. No man is ever
heard to felicitate himself upon the fact that he is not some other man.