THE GYPSY COOKS.
"Dearest Papa:" (wrote Billie) "Cousin Helen has entirely recovered from
her fright,--anger she calls it. She is not afraid of either of the
Lupos, although the dent in the plank where the knife was still standing
when we finally did get home will always make me feel trembly. Dr. Hume
is making us a visit. Cousin Helen will not hear of his leaving us. She
says she will certainly have another attack of heart failure if he goes
away, but that it's of a different variety from the last. I think we all
have a touch of that kind of heart disease as a matter of fact, boys and
girls. He is a wonderful man and has taken us on some beautiful walks
over the mountain. Nancy and Percy always stay behind with Cousin Helen,
and we are finally beginning to understand that it's as much preference
as self-denial. Nancy and I are doing the cooking with some help from
Ben and Dr. Hume. It's great fun. We cook on a camp fire outside and not
on that wretched little stove, which is like a bad child and never
behaves when it is expected to. Ben and Percy wash the dishes. Thank
heavens for that. I could never make a living as a scullery maid. It's a
dog's life. Elinor and Mary make up our cots and keep things tidy. It is
really and truly camping now, and such a relief not to have those Lupos.
But there is trouble about the laundry. Nobody in these high places will
stoop to wash clothes. If you could send us up a strong, fearless girl,
it doesn't matter how little she knows, it would be fine. We want her
strong to scour pans and wash clothes, and fearless enough to be left at
the camp alone when we all go off in the 'Comet' on a picnic.
"The mountain girl who saved us is named Phoebe. Her father is not
insane, but he has no memory. His accent might be English. At any rate
it's better than ours. Nobody on the mountain knows anything about them.
An old Indian brought them to the cabin when Phoebe was a baby and took
care of them both for several years. The people call the man 'Frenchy,'
why I'm sure I can't imagine, perhaps because he seems foreign. He does
really beautiful wood carving and basket weaving and he seemed quite
pleased over getting orders from us. We all of us want to do something
for Phoebe but she is not the kind you can approach easily. I would not
dare even offer her a pair of shoes, and she's generally barefooted.
Cousin Helen thought perhaps she might like to work for us, but I would
as soon think of asking our dear cousin herself. I'm the best coffee
maker in the compound and I've learned by the cookbook how to poach
eggs, after breaking six to get the hang of it. Dr. Hume knows a Scotch
dish that's a dream and so easy to make. Nancy and I are going to give
them a surprise. It's 'Mock Duck,' made of beefsteak stuffed with many
things, and then rolled up like a mummy and tied with strings. We shall
roast it over hot embers on a spit Ben has rigged up, with a thing he
calls a 'gutter' to catch the juices. Good-by, dearest Papa. Don't
forget the strong, fearless girl.
Your devoted daughter,
Billie."
In due time a telegram was telephoned from the railroad station to the
nearest hotel and from thence to the postoffice in the village at the
foot of Sunrise Mountain. Here it was written down on a scrap of paper
and in the course of events reached Billie Campbell. It said:
"Meet Alberdina, fearless Swiss-German. 4.30 train Saturday. Father."
Ben brought the message with the evening mail Friday afternoon while
Nancy and Billie, much heated and excited, were in the act of cooking
the mock duck.
"What are you roasting? An Indian papoose?" he demanded, after they had
laughed over the name of the new, fearless maid.
The spurious fowl made of a large flat piece of meat stuffed out to
plump proportions and tied at each end did resemble a fat little Indian
baby.
"Don't worry us," exclaimed Nancy. "We have enough to bother us now. The
potatoes are taking forever to cook and the beans are almost done."
"The onions are just as bad," put in Billie.
"Why don't you put the onions and potatoes in the same pot with the
beans? Maybe it will bring them luck," suggested Ben.
"Do you think it would affect the flavor?" Billie asked eagerly.
But Nancy, of a more adventurous spirit in cooking, recklessly dumped
all the vegetables together into one pot and set it on the kerosene
stove, which had been carried out by the ever-useful Ben and placed at
no great distance from the open fire.
Percy came up just then.
"How are the Gypsy cooks? Is the pot boiling? What's that thing that
looks like a pig in a blanket? Or is this a cannibal feast?"
"Run away, Algernon Percival, and don't ask so many questions," replied
Billie, stirring the pot.
"I've brought the dinner horn along," said Percy in an insinuating tone
of voice.
Even the Gypsy cooks laughed at this. Percy was the last person to rise
in the morning. He usually appeared with the coffee and eggs, but the
moment he waked up, he seized the trumpet from a nail in the wall at the
side of his bed and blew a long triumphant aria with variations. Then
from the camp fire at a safe distance from the log hut would come shouts
of derision from the others who had been up quite an hour. The table had
been carried out under the trees, and here in the early morning they had
their breakfast. Here also, they had their supper if it was ready
before dark and there were no lights to attract the myriads of
night-flying insects. But it did look this evening as if they would be
obliged to transfer all dishes and stools, table and eatables into the
house, unless the potatoes and onions could be impressed with the
importance of submitting to the inevitable.
Dr. Hume, just in from a long walk, tired and mortally hungry, now made
his appearance, and Miss Helen Campbell in dainty white, and without any
traces whatever of her recent experience with Mrs. Lupo, came trailing
across the clearing. There was an expectant expression on her face, as
of one who is thinking with inward pleasure of dinner. Elinor came with
a bowl of Michaelmas daisies and Mary brought up the procession,
carrying a platter of bread sliced so as not to destroy the shape of the
loaf, an accomplishment she was proud of.
Percy, seeing the gathering of the company, promptly lifted the trumpet
to his lips and blew a blast so startling and unexpected that Mary gave
a nervous shriek and dropped the bread to the ground.
"Oh, you wretch," she cried, "see what you have done! And what was the
use anyway, since dinner isn't ready and we are all here?"
"Don't be so hasty in your judgments, Lady Mary," answered Percy,
composedly gathering up the slices of bread. "That was a song of joy
because a beautiful damozel approached with bread for the hungry."
"Hungry?" repeated Miss Campbell, watching, unmoved, the process of
shaking the pine needles from the bread. "Starving, rather. If I don't
have my dinner in a minute, I shall be light enough to float away like a
thistledown."
"Who said starving?" cried Dr. Hume, joining the circle. "If there were
a stronger word, I'd use it."
"Famished?" suggested Ben.
"Perishing for want of food," added Elinor.
Nancy and Billie exchanged glances of dismay and Billie impotently
poked the pot of vegetables with a long peeled wand.
"What's that thing that looks like an emigrant's roll?" demanded the
doctor.
"It won't explode, I hope," remarked Miss Campbell, noticing that the
roll of meat seemed to be bursting its bonds in the process of roasting.
"Poor thing, it does seem to be suffering," said Dr. Hume gravely.
"There is some enlargement taking place in its internal organs, due to
heat expansion, I judge."
"I guess that animal, whatever it is, feels something like an early
Christian martyr," put in Percy.
"What is the creature?" inquired Miss Campbell, raising her tortoise
shell lorgnette in order the better to see the writhing form over the
flames.
"It's a duck," answered Billie, desperately stirring the kettle of
vegetables.
"Duck?" they shouted in a loud chorus.
"There never was a duck on land or sea that looked like that."
"Where are its legs?"
"Was it a winged duck?"
"Perhaps it's a species of wingless, legless mountain duck, unknown to
low countries?"
"Well, if you must know," cried Billie, now very hot and red over the
fire, and wishing devoutly that that brutally truthful speech about
watched pots had never been made, "if you demand the truth, it's mock
duck----"
"It sounds like the name of a Chinese laundry-man," put in Percy.
"Made by a famous Southern recipe. We didn't know it would take so long
to cook." She was ashamed to mention the potatoes and onions. "If you
are all so famished, you might start on the bread and butter."
Instantly they gathered around the table and Percy passed around the
bread tray. From bread they turned to the salad of tomatoes and
cucumbers. Lettuce did not seem to flourish in that country. They drank
the ginger ale and ate all the olives, and still the spurious fowl
remained a mockery to cooks. It sent forth rivulets of juices and made a
great to do over the fire, like people who are all promises and talk and
no action, but it would not get done. Then the doctor slipped away and
presently returned with his contribution to the supper. He had made it
in the morning and it had been standing in the ice chest all day.
"I thought we might help this so as there would be no delays after we
had dispatched that talkative fat person in the blanket," he said. "I
hope you will like it. My mother used to call it 'piddling.' It was a
wash-day dessert and we always had it Mondays, made from Sunday's cake."
Elinor busied herself serving the wash-day dessert into china saucers.
It was made of slices of cake soaked in fruit juice and spread with jam.
"When there is cream in the house, it adds of course," observed the
doctor with some pride over his success as a cook.
"The flavor's delicious," observed Miss Campbell, testing a small piece
daintily on the edge of her spoon.
"It's bully," exclaimed Ben.
The doctor was really vain over his efforts.
"And I made it from memory," he informed them, "without any recipe. I
call that pretty good for a first attempt."
They wondered if he had ever done anything in his profession that gave
him as much childish delight as making this simple dessert of his
boyhood.
After a brief silence, broken only by the tinkle of spoons against
saucers, the campers around the table glanced at each other guiltily.
Except for the portions reserved for the two cooks, there was not a
crumb of piddling left.
"Better hide the plates and cover the dish," said the doctor in a
conspirator's whisper. "It's enough to provoke them into a mutiny. Time
enough to break the news after they have eaten their mock turtle."
"Duck," choked Percy.
But the Gypsy cooks had noticed nothing. They were too absorbed with
straining the beans and the onions now cooked to shreds, from the
adamantine potatoes. The cooked vegetables they arranged in the bottom
of a large meat platter as a becoming bed for the mock duck which
Billie, with mingled feelings of fear and triumph, now prepared to loose
from his fastenings with a long fork and the historic carving knife. But
Mock Duck to the end was a rogue and a trickster. The poor little cook
had just loosened him from the spit and was holding him precariously on
the prong of a fork, when he gave a malicious leap into the air and
plunged into the very centre of the hot embers. Instantly a circle of
flames rose high about him and the air was charged with the fumes of
burning flesh.
"Oh, oh!" shrieked Billie. "Help! Help!"
They did what they could to save the remnants of Mock Duck. Ben singed
his eyebrows in an effort to spear him on a fork and raise him from his
fiery bed. They were all very quick but the flames were quicker, and
when at last Mock Duck was lifted from the embers his form was no longer
recognizable and the surface of his outer covering was burned to a
cinder.
The two little Gypsy cooks wept with disappointment. They had worked so
hard and were so hot and tired and hungry.
Their friends were consumed with pity.
"There, there," cried Dr. Hume, too tender hearted to look upon tears
without being moved. "Don't cry, little cooks. Look at all this nice
gravy and these delicious vegetables."
"Why, my dearest children, you mustn't mind," exclaimed Miss Campbell.
"See what a beautiful mixture we can have. Pour the gravy right into the
platter with the beans and onions. We'll eat it on bread."
How callous do the most fastidious become after a few weeks in camp!
"Come, come, there's no time to be lost," exclaimed the starving Percy.
But the two disappointed cooks had nothing to say. They choked back
their tears and fell to with an appetite on beans and onions
ingloriously mixed with bread and gravy. And as a final delicacy, the
campers, who had commenced with dessert and salad, finished off with two
very delicious mealy potatoes apiece.
"If we stayed in this wilderness long, we'd revert to savages," Miss
Campbell remarked, stirring a large cup of black coffee. "But on the
whole, I think I am enjoying the reversion and my appetite is getting
better every day."
"If I were starving in the wilderness and somebody offered me Mock Duck,
I'd refuse it," ejaculated Billie irrelevantly, for nobody had mentioned
mock duck for a long time.
THE BALLAD OF MOCK DUCK.
(Poem by Percy.)
There was a haughty animal,
Lived in a meadow fine;
A domesticated lady
Of the genus called bovine.
Like many other females,
Beast or human or divine,
This domesticated lady
Of the family of kine
Gazed with rapture at her features,
As reflected in a brook,
When with unblushing ecstasy
Each morn she took a look.
As she smiled at her reflection
In the mirror of the stream,
She indulged in gentle rev'ries
Of complacency supreme.
"Besides my gift of beauty
And my cultivated mind,
I have other choice attractions
Of a very varied kind.
"My roasts and steaks are luscious,
On my hash all have relied,
My youthful veal's delicious,
And my milk is certified."
On these pleasing meditations
Broke a mother with her brood,
Sailing o'er that calm reflection
In a most ungracious mood.
"You may be steaks and roast beef
And hash of quality,
But you stoop to imitations
Of poor humble little me.
"You may be a benefactor,
But I'll just remind you, ma'am,
That in one small particular
You are a blooming sham.
"Don't let your sweet milk curdle
And don't let it sour your luck,
If I make so bold to mention
That imposture called 'Mock Duck'!"
So this web-footed lady,
With a malice quite feline,
Disturbed the calm reflections
Of that innocent bovine.