The Mayonnaise
The girls gave a party to celebrate the recovery of Cuthbert. They were
allowed to do this on one condition, that they made everything for it
themselves.
This was Mr. Leighton's idea, and it found rapturous approval in the
ranks of the family, and immediate rebellion in the heart of Mrs.
Leighton. It was her one obstinacy that she should retain full hold of
the reins of housekeeping. Once let a lot of girls into the kitchen,
and where are you?
"Once let a lot of girls grow up with no kind of responsibility in life,
and where are you then?" asked Mr. Leighton. "I don't want my girls to
drift. No man is really healthy unless he is striving after something,
if it's only after finding a new kind of beetle. I don't see how a girl
can be healthy without a definite occupation."
"They make their beds, and they have their music," sighed Mrs. Leighton.
"Girls in my day didn't interfere with the housekeeping."
"I've thought about their music," said Mr. Leighton. "I'm glad they have
it. But it isn't life, you know. A drawing-room accomplishment isn't
life. I want them to be equipped all round. Not just by taking classes
either. Classes end by making people willing to be taught, but the
experiences of life make them very swift to learn. We can't have them
sitting dreaming about husbands for ever. Dreams and ideals are all
very well, but one scamps the realities if one goes on at them too long.
Elma means to marry a duke, you know. Isn't it much better that in the
meantime she should learn to make a salad?"
"The servants will be so cross," said Mrs. Leighton. She invariably saw
readily enough where she must give in, but on these occasions she never
gave in except with outward great unwillingness.
"Oh, perhaps not," said Mr. Leighton. "They have dull enough lives
themselves. I'm sure it will be rather fun for them to see Mabel making
cakes."
"Mabel can't make cakes," exclaimed Mrs. Leighton. Her professional
talents were really being questioned here. Throughout the length and
breadth of the country, nobody made cakes like Mrs. Leighton.
Mr. Leighton grew a little bit testy.
"You know, my dear, if this house were a business concern it would be
your duty to take your eldest daughter into partnership at this stage.
As it is, you seem to want to keep her out for ever."
Mrs. Leighton sighed heavily.
"That's just it, John," said she; "I want to keep her out for ever. I
want them all to remain little children, and myself being mother to
them. Since Mabel got her hair up--already it's different. I feel in
an underhand sort of way that I'm being run by my own daughter--I really
do."
"More like by your own son," said Mr. Leighton. "The way you give in to
that boy is a disgrace."
"Oh, Cuthbert's different," said Mrs. Leighton brightly.
"Poor Mabel," smiled Mr. Leighton.
It was an old subject with them, thrashed out again and again, ever
since Cuthbert as a rather spoiled child of seven had had his little
nose put out of joint by the first arrival of girls in the imperious
person of Mabel. Mrs. Leighton had always felt a little grieved with the
absurdly rapid manner in which Mr. Leighton's affections had gone over
to Mabel.
"In any case, try them with the party," said he. "The only thing that
can happen is for the cook to give notice."
"And I shall have to get another one, of course." Mrs. Leighton's voice
dwelt in a suspiciously marked manner on the pronoun.
"Now there's another opportunity for making use of Mabel," said her
husband.
Mrs. Leighton let her hands fall.
"Engage my own servants! What next?" she asked.
"Oh, I don't know," said he. "Cuthbert does heaps of things for me.
You women are the true conservatives. If we had you in power there
would be no chance for the country."
"Well, you might have persuaded Cuthbert to succeed you as Chairman of
your Company, with a steady income and all that sort of thing," she
exclaimed, "instead of rushing him into a profession which keeps him
tied night and day, and gives him no return as yet for all his work."
"I should never stand in the way of enthusiasm," said her husband.
"Cuthbert has a real genius for his profession."
"Then why not find a profession for Mabel?"
"I have thought of that. It seems right, however, that a man ought to
be equipped for one profession, and a girl for several. I can always
leave my girls enough money to keep the wolf from the door at least. I
have an objection to any girl being obliged to work entirely for her
living. Men ought to relieve them of that at least. But we must give
them occupation; work that develops. Come, come, my dear; you must let
them have their head a little, even although they ruin the cakes. A
good mother makes useless daughters, you know."
"Well, it's a wrench, John."
"There, there," he smiled at her.
"And the servants are sure to give notice."
She regretted much of her pessimism, however, when she gave the news to
the girls. Not for a long time had they been so animated. Each took
her one department in the supper menu prepared under the guidance of
Mrs. Leighton.
First, chicken salad inserted into a tomato, cut into water-lily shape,
reposing on lettuce leaves--one on each little plate, mayonnaise
dressing on top.
The mayonnaise captured Mabel.
"But you can't make it, it's a most trying thing to do--better let cook
make it," interjected Mrs. Leighton.
"What about our party?" asked Mabel.
"Very well," said an abject mother.
So that was settled.
Then fruit salad, immediately claimed by Jean, who knew everything there
was to be known of fruit, inside and out, as she explained volubly.
Mrs. Leighton's quiet face twitched a trifle and then resolved itself
into business lines once more.
Meringues! they must have meringues! Nobody seemed to rise to that.
Elma felt it was her turn.
"They look awfully difficult," said she, "but I could try a day or two
before. I'll do the meringues."
This cost her a great effort. Mother didn't appear at all encouraging,
She snipped her lips together in rather a grim way, and it had the
effect of sending a cold streak of fear up and down the back of the
meringue volunteer.
"Are they very difficult, mummy?" she asked apologetically.
"Oh, no," said Mrs. Leighton airily. "After mayonnaise, one may do
anything."
"I can whip cream--beautifully," explained Elma. "It's that queer crusty
thing I'm afraid of."
"I shall be ruined in eggs, I see that very distinctly," said Mrs.
Leighton.
After this, there seemed to be no proper opportunity for Betty.
"Couldn't I make a trifle?" she asked modestly. "A trifle at ten." Mrs.
Leighton looked her over. "Oh! very well--Betty will make trifle."
Betty looked as though she would drop into tears. Elma put her hand
through her arm and whispered while the others debated about cakes, "I
can find out all about trifles. Miss Grace knows. She made them
cen--centuries ago, and Miss Annie never lets the new cooks try."
Betty turned on her a happy face.
"Oh, Elma, you're most reviving," she said gratefully.
Then they had cakes to consider. Now and again they had been allowed to
bake cakes, and they felt that here they were on their own ground.
Betty revived in a wonderful manner, and immediately insisted on baking
a gingerbread one.
"Nobody eats gingerbread at parties," said Mabel in a disgusted voice.
"This isn't a picnic we're arranging, or a school-room tea. It's a
grown-up party, and we just aren't going to have gingerbread."
"Yet I've sometimes thought that gingerbread at a party tasted very
well," remarked Mrs. Leighton.
"Oh, mummy!" Mabel seemed very sorry for her mother.
But Betty had regained her confidence.
"I shall bake gingerbread," she exclaimed in her most dogged manner.
"There are always the rabbits, of course," said Jean, with her nose in
the air.
"Girls, girls," said Mrs. Leighton.
"Gingerbread one, walnut cream cake another. What will you bake, Jean?"
"Orange icing," quoth Jean.
"And sponge cake cream for Elma," she added in a thoughtful way.
"I do like the way you fling all the uninteresting things at me,"
exclaimed Elma. "I think sponge cake cream is the moistest, flabbiest,
silliest cake I know. We're putting cream in everything. Everybody
will be sick of cream. Why can't I bake a coffee cake?"
"Why can't she?" asked Mrs. Leighton severely.
"Coffee cake, Elma," said Mabel. She had taken to paper and pencil. "I
only hope we shall know what it is when it appears!"
"And you'd better all begin as soon as you can," said Mrs. Leighton; "so
that we find out where we are a few days before the party occurs."
She still looked with foreboding on the whole arrangement.
Cook preserved a hauteur on the subject of the invasion, through which
the girls found it very hard to break.
"Never seed such a picnic," she informed the housemaid. "My, you should
have been here when Miss Betty burned her gingerbread!"
That was a sad occasion, and after all, there was nothing for it but the
rabbits. Betty moaned over the lost raisins, the "ginger didn't count."
"I stoned every one of them," she sighed. Mr. Leighton found some brown
lumps in the rabbit hutches. "That's not the thing for these beasts,"
he said; "what is it?" And Betty explained that it would be quite safe
for them, for (once more) hadn't she stoned every raisin herself?
"I'm glad you're a millionaire, John," said Mrs. Leighton grimly when
she heard about it.
Elma made Betty try again. Elma's heart was in her mouth about her own
performances, but she hung over Betty till a success was secured to the
gingerbread. Then she couldn't get the kitchen for her coffee cake,
because Mabs, in a neat white apron and sleeves, was ornamenting a
ragged-looking structure of white icing with little dabs of pink, and
trying to write "Cuthbert" in neat letters across the top. She had
prepared a small cake--"just to taste it." They all tasted. It seemed
rather crumply.
"Isn't there a good deal of walnut in it?" asked Mrs. Leighton humbly.
"It's nearly all walnut," said Mabel. "I like walnut."
Jean worried along with her piece.
"Nobody will survive this party," said she.
At last Elma's coffee cake got its innings. She was so nervous after
the gingerbread fiasco that only the ultimate good humour of Cook saved
her.
"Don't hurry over it, Miss Elma; it's coming nicely. I'll tell you when
to stop beating."
Nothing else would have guaranteed the existence of the cake. Cook also
saw to the firing. This gave Elma such a delightful feeling of
gratitude that she opened out her heart on the subject of meringues.
Cook said that of course it was easy for them "as had never tried" just
to rush in and make meringues the first thing. The likes of herself
found them "kittlish" things. You may make meringues all your life, and
then they'll go wrong for no reason at all. It was "knack" that was
wanted principally.
"Do you think I've got knack, Cook?" asked Elma humbly.
Cook gave her a clear night in the kitchen for the meringues, as a
reward for her humility. It was marvellous that nearly all of them came
fairly decently. Cook found the shapes "a bit queer," but "them as knew"
who was providing the party wouldn't think they were "either here or
there."
"I'll make it up with the cream," quoth Elma happily. A great load was
off her mind.
She now devoted herself to Betty's trifle. As a great triumph they
decided to provide a better trifle than even Cook knew how to prepare.
Miss Grace entered heartily into the plan. They were allowed to call
one morning when she was ensconced in the parlour. Saunders brought in
solemnly, first, several sheets of white paper. These were laid very
seriously on the bare finely-polished table. Then came a plate of
sponge cake in neat slices, a thin custard in a glass jug, several
little dishes, one of blanched almonds cut in long strips, another of
halved cherries, one of tiny macaroon biscuits, and so on. Miss Grace
set herself in a high chair, and proceedings began. Elma wondered to
the end of her days what kind of a cook Miss Grace would have made if
she had been paid for her work. Everything was prepared for Miss Grace,
but she took an hour and a quarter to finish the trifle. She added
custard in silver spoonfuls as though each one had a definite effect of
its own, and she several times measured the half glassful of cordial
which was apportioned to each layer of sponge cake. The ceremony seemed
interminable. Elma saw how true it was what her father often said, that
one ought always to have a big enough object in life to keep one from
paying too much importance to trifles. She immediately afterwards
apologized to herself for the pun, which, she explained in that half
world of dreaming to which she so often resorted, she hadn't at all
intended.
Elma and Betty, however, to the end of their days, never forgot how to
make trifle.
Betty's trifle was a magnificent success.
Jean engaged a whole fruiterer's shop, as it seemed, for her salad, and
found she made enough for forty people out of a fourth of what she had
ordered. This put Mrs. Leighton back into her old prophetic position.
Had she not told Jean a quarter of that fruit would be enough?
Mabel arranged everything in good order for her chicken concoction, and
at last had only the mayonnaise to make. That occurred on the afternoon
of the party. Cuthbert and Harry and Mr. Maclean were all
about--supposed to be helping. May Turberville, Betty's great friend,
and her brother Lance, a boy of fourteen, brought round various loans in
the way of cups and cream and sugar "things." The table in the
dining-room was laid for supper with a most dainty centre-piece decked
with roses and candelabra. Most of their labours being over, the
company retreated to the smoke-room, where "high jinks" were soon in
process. Lance capered about, balancing chairs on his nose, and doing
the wild things which only take place in a smoke-room.
In the midst of it appeared Mabel, wide-eyed and distressed, at the
door. The white apron of a few days ago was smeared with little
elongated drops of oily stuff. She held a fork wildly dripping in her
hand.
"Oh--oh, isn't it awful," she cried, "the mayonnaise won't may."
It was the last anxiety, and, in the matter of the pints of the Leighton
girls, quite the last straw. Just when they had begun to be confident
of their party, the real backbone of the thing had given out.
Dr. Harry removed a cigarette from his lips.
"Hey--what's that?" he asked. "Mayonnaise--ripping! I knew an American
Johnnie who made it. Bring it here, and we'll put it right."
Mabel spread her hands mutely. "In this atmosphere?" she asked.
Oh! They had soon the windows open. Harry insisted he could make
mayonnaise. "You don't meet American men for nothing, let me tell you,"
he said. It was fun to see him supplied with plate, fork and bottles.
He looked at Mabel's attempt at dressing.
"Good gracious!" he said, "where's the egg?"
Mabel turned rather faint. "I put in the white," said she.
Dr. Harry roared. Then he explained carefully and kindly.
"Mayonnaise is an interesting affair--apart from the joys of eating it.
A chemical action takes place between the yoke of an egg and the oil and
vinegar. You could hardly expect the white to play up."
"It was Cook," exclaimed Mabel. "She said something about yokes for a
custard and whites for--for----"
"Meringues, you donkey," said Jean.
Dr. Harry made the mayonnaise.
Lance Turberville cut the most shameful capers throughout. He decorated
Harry with paper aprons and the cap of a chef, and stuck his eyeglass in
the wrong eye while Harry worked patiently with a fork in semicircles.
He was sent off with Betty and May, only to reappear later dressed out
as a maid-servant. Nobody except Dr. Harry could take the mayonnaise
seriously while Lance was about. At that moment the outdoor bell rang.
With the inspiration born of mischief, and before any one could stop
him, Lance rushed off and opened it.
Three ladies stood on the doorstep.
He showed them solemnly into the drawing-room, tripping over his skirt
merely a trifle, and nearly giving Bertha, who had primly come to attend
to the door, hysterics. He advanced to the smoke-room, where the
mayonnaise was nearly completed.
"Mrs. and Miss Dudgeon and Miss Steven are in the drawing-room," said
Lance.