Speed Nell
Vacation with the Tucker Twins

CHAPTER XX
THE AFTER-MATH

They took a steamer to New York, that Mecca of the newly-wed, and we all adjourned to the pier to wish them God-speed. As the vessel pulled out, Rags produced from his pocket the self-same old tennis shoes that we had found the morning we took possession of Mrs. Rand's cottage, and threw them after the departing couple. They looked very comical as they floated along for a moment like veritable gun-boats and then filled and sank.

"Requiescat in Pace!" muttered Wink. "At least you can't forget them again."

The boys were breaking camp next day, and the day after we were to get ready to turn over the cottage to Mrs. Rand's next tenants. Zebedee bitterly regretted that he had not taken the place for two months, but it was too late now. Besides, his holiday was over and we all well knew that Willoughby would not be quite the same thing with our kind host not there, the boys no longer in their camp, and good Miss Cox married and gone.

Zebedee had to go back to Richmond that night, ready for harness the next morning.

"My, but I dread it!" he exclaimed as he took us over to the trolley to start us back to Willoughby Beach. "I almost wish I had never had a holiday, it is so hard to go back to work. What are stupid old newspapers for, anyhow? Who wants to read them?" This made us smile, as Zebedee is like a raging lion until he gets the morning paper, and then goes through the same rampageous humour later in the day until the afternoon paper appears to assuage his agony. "We journalists get no thanks, anyhow. I agree with the Frenchman who says that a journalist's efforts are no more appreciated than a cook's; no one remembers what he had for yesterday's dinner or what was in yesterday's newspaper."

Blanche listened to Mr. Tucker's words with rapt attention. She always stood at a respectful distance but within easy ear-shot of the conversation, which she eagerly drank in and then commented on later to Tweedles and me. But this too nearly touched her heart for her to wait until we were alone to make her original and characteristic comments.

"Oh, Mr. Tucker, it is so considerable of you to find a symbolarity between the chosen professions of master and handymaiden! Sense I have been conductoring of the curlinary apartment of your enstablishment, I have so often felt the infutility of my labours. What I do is enjoyed only for the momentariness of its consumption, and is never more thought of unless it is to say too rich or something; and then, if it disagrees, poor Blanche is remembered again, and then not to say agree'bly. Sometimes whin I have been placin' clean papers on the kitchen shelves, the same sentimentality has occurred to me that you so apely quotetioned a moment ago, Mr. Tucker; namely, in relation to journalists and cooks. I see all that pretty printin' going to was'e jes as a restin' place for pots 'n pans, and then in the garbage pail I see the cold waffles that was once as fresh and hot as the next, one no more considered than the other, and I could weep for both of us. Our electrocution teacher used to say a piece about 'Impervious Cæsar, dead and turned to clay doth stop the crack to keep the wind away.'"

We stood aghast during this speech. Dum looked as though she would welcome Death, the Deliverer, with joy, anything to relieve the strain she was on to keep from exploding with laughter; but Zebedee did not seem to think it was funny at all. He listened with the greatest courtesy and when she had finished with her quotation (which we afterwards agreed was singularly appropriate, since Cæsar had been made "impervious" enough to keep out water as well as wind), he answered her very kindly:

"I thank you, Blanche, for understanding me so well. I can tell you that I, for one, will always remember your waffles; and had I known at the time that there was any more batter, there would not have been any cold ones to find their last ignominious resting place in the garbage pail."

"I also have saved some of your writings, Mr. Tucker, – an editorial that Miss Dum said you had written before you came for your holiday, – and I will put it in my mem'ry book as an epitaph of you."

Then Dum did explode. She made out that she was sneezing and even insisted upon purchasing a menthol inhaler before she went back to Willoughby, declaring she felt a head cold coming on.

The Beach seemed stale, flat and unprofitable somehow when we got back. We missed Miss Cox and above all we missed Zebedee.

"I'm glad we couldn't get the cottage for another month," yawned Dum. "Old Zebedeelums couldn't be here more than once or twice in that time and it would surely be stupid without him;" and all of us agreed with her in our hearts.

The cottage was in a terrible state of disorder. We had been too excited in the morning to do our chores. Beds were unmade, the living-room messy and untidy with sweaters on chairs, crumbs on the table and floor and shades some up, and some down, and some crooked (nothing to my mind gives a room a more forlorn look than window shades at sixes and sevens); the kitchen, usually in the pink of perfection, just as Blanche had left it after cooking what she had termed, a somewhat "forgetable" breakfast.

"Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow," said Dee. "Let's leave this mess and take a dip before supper. We will have fifteen minutes at least before Blanche can get the funeral baked meats on the table."

We were to have a very simple repast and we told Blanche just to put it on the table and we would wait on ourselves. The girl was as tired as we were and we felt we must spare her. We determined to get the cottage in perfect order the next day and just to "live keerless" for that evening and night, as Blanche expressed it.

Five hats and five pairs of gloves, dropped where the owners happened to fancy, did not help to make the living-room look any more orderly. Dum took off her white kid pumps, that had been pinching a little all day, and left them in the middle of the floor. The morning paper, despised of Zebedee but eagerly devoured nevertheless, was scattered all over the divan and floor, and a bag of bananas Blanche had been intrusted with was in a state of dishabille on the crummy table. It was surely a place to flee from and flee we did.

Such a swim as we had! It seemed the best of the whole month. The water was perfect, just a little cooler than the air, and the setting sun turned it to liquid gold.

"Why, look at Annie! She is swimming, really swimming!" called out Mary Flannagan. And sure enough there was Annie staying on top of the water and calmly paddling around like a beautiful white swan.

"Of course I can swim in golden water! Who couldn't? I do wish Mr. Tucker could see me. Isn't it too bad after all his patience with me that I wait until he is gone to show what I can do? Somehow this seems like a dream, and the water is fairy water."

"Let's all catch hold of hands and lie on our backs and float," I suggested.

"If you won't leave me when the tide comes, to turn over and swim in," pleaded Annie.

"I will stay with you until your shoulders grate against the shore," promised Mary.

And so we lay all in a row on top of the water, faces upturned to the wonderful evening sky, our bodies as light as air and our hearts even lighter.

"Gee, Dee! I am glad you suggested this!" sighed Dum. "I never felt more peaceful in my life than I do this minute, and I know I never felt more forlorn than I did when we first got back to the cottage."

"Me too! Me too!" we chorused.

"Let's float to Spain and never come back," suggested Annie.

"And this from a little lady who has been afraid to get her toes wet all month! Well, I'm game if the rest of you are," and Mary gave a few vigorous kicks that sent the line some distance from shore; and still Annie with her white-swan expression floated peacefully on. We lay there chatting and dreaming, washing off "the cares that infest the day," planning the future and gazing into the clear obscure of the darkening sky.

 
"'Star light, star bright, first star I've seen tonight!
I wish I may, I wish I might, have the wish I wish tonight,'"
 

sang Dum, and sure enough there was a star.

"Look here, girls, it's getting late! I hate to awaken you from this dream of eternal bliss, but we've got to go in," and Dee turned over on her face to swim in, thereby causing some commotion in the hearts of the two swimmers newly initiated in the art.

"Don't leave me!" gasped Annie.

"Didn't your faithful Mary swear to take you safe to shore? Just lie still and I'll tow you in;" and in they came, Mary steaming away like a tug boat and Annie floating like an ocean liner, until her shoulders grated on the sand and then and only then was she convinced that she could touch bottom.

We raced back to the cottage, hungry and happy, the fifteen minutes that we had meant to stay having turned into an hour in the twinkling of an eye. From afar we espied Blanche on the porch, shooing us back with one hand and beckoning with the other. We obeyed the beckoning one and eagerly demanded what was the matter. Her face was so pale that the name of Blanche was almost appropriate.

"What is it, Blanche? What has happened?" we cried.

But she was speechless except for gasping: "Oh, the disgrace, the disgrace!"

We followed her trembling form into the living room, wet suits and all, feeling that the exigency of the case was sufficient cause for suspension of rules and for once we would bring dripping bathing suits into the house. The cause of Blanche's perturbation of mind was easily understood when we beheld the portly figure of Cousin Park Garnett stiffly seated in a dusty chair (on Dum's Panama hat it was discovered later). She was indignantly waving her turkey-tail fan, and such an expression of disgust I have never seen on a human countenance.

The room looked no better than when we had left it and even a little worse, as the pickup supper we were to have had been dumped on the table in great confusion and not at all in Blanche's usual careful style. We had told her not to set the table and she had taken us at our word. The odour of sardines left in the opened boxes mingled with that of the bananas, still in the bursting bag. The bread was cut in thick, uneven slices. A glass jar of pickle and one of olives added to the sketchiness of the table. It was "confusion worse confounded."

"Oh!" I gasped, on viewing my indignant relative, "I thought you had gone!"

"No, I have not yet departed," stiffly from Cousin Park. "This is rather an unusual time for bathing, is it not?"

"Yes'm, but – " and I began to stammer out something, fully aware of the dismal figure I cut, standing limply in front of that august presence, my wet clothes sending forth streams of water that settled in little puddles on the floor. I was well aware of the fact that Cousin Park had never approved of my friendship with the Tuckers, and now, coming on us in this far from commendable state, she would have what she would consider a handle for her hitherto unfounded objections.

But Dee, who by some power that she possessed in common with her father, the power by a certain tact to become master of any situation, no matter how embarrassing, came forward and with all the manners of one much older and clothed in suitable garments, so that you lost sight of her scant and dripping bathing suit, she said:

"We are very glad to see you, Mrs. Garnett, and are extremely sorry to have missed any of your visit. You have found us in some disarray from the fact that we are preparing to move and at the same time have just been engaged in having a wedding in the family."

"A wedding! Whose wedding?" The wily Dee had taken her mind off of the disorder in the room and now she felt she could soon win her over to complacency at least. The wetting paled to insignificance beside the wedding.

"Why, our dear friend and chaperone, Miss Cox."

"Your chaperone! Goodness gracious, child! Did she marry your father?"

"Heavens, no!" laughed Dee. "Mr. Bob Gordon is the happy man!"

"Miss Binks did not tell me a word of it," said Mrs. Garnett rather suspiciously.

"No, she did not know about it." "Not know about it? That is strange! Was there any reason for keeping it secret?"

"No especial reason for keeping it secret except that it was to be a very quiet affair and the invited guests included only the most intimate friends. Mabel Binks has a way of getting herself invited by hook or crook, and we just decided not to tell her about the matter."

"How long were they engaged? It seems strange behaviour in a chaperone."

"I tell you what you do, Mrs. Garnett. If you won't mind the informality of a picnic supper, you stay and have supper with us. We will run up and get dressed and be down in a moment and then we will tell you the whole thing, how they got engaged and all about it." And so anxious was my cousin for a bit of news to retail to the ladies on the hotel porch that she actually stayed.

When we got down stairs after very hasty toilets, we found the good-natured Blanche had brought some order out of the chaos of the supper table and with an instinct truly remarkable had made a pot of delicious, fragrant coffee. Coffee, I had often heard Cousin Park declare to be her one weakness. Now you may be sure that what Cousin Park, with her smug self-satisfaction, considered a weakness in herself would really have been a passion in anyone else.

As Dee, who was doing the honours at the head of the table, it being her week as housekeeper, poured the coffee and our still far from mollified guest saw the beautiful golden brown hue that it assumed the minute it mingled with the cream, her expression softened and she looked very much as she had when Judge Grayson recited, "My Grandmother's Turkey-tail Fan." The colour of coffee when it is poured on cream is a never failing test of its quality, and the colour of Blanche's coffee was beyond compare.

The food was very good if not very elegantly served, and I really believe Mrs. Garnett enjoyed herself as much as she was capable of doing. When anyone's spinal column has solidified she can't have much fun, and I truly believe that was the case with hers.

What she enjoyed as much as the coffee and even more, perhaps, was the delightful news she was gathering in every detail to take back to the old hens roosting on the hotel porch. Mr. and Mrs. Gordon had made no secret of their affairs, even their former engagement and cause of the break being known now to some twenty persons; so we felt that it would be all right if we told the whole thing to our eager listener.

She agreed with the young lover that the Lobster Quadrille (of which she had never heard before) was nonsense pure and simple. Dum had to recite it twice and finally we all got up and danced it and sang it for her. Then she did acknowledge that it might appeal to some persons, but that a girl with as irregular features as the former Miss Cox had been very foolish to let such twaddle as that stand in the way of matrimony, and she was surely exceedingly fortunate, when Time had certainly done nothing to straighten her face, to be able to catch a husband after all.

We well knew that while Time had not had a beautifying effect on our beloved Miss Cox's countenance, it had made more lovely her character and soul, and that was after all what Mr. Gordon loved more than anything else. We kept our knowledge to ourselves, however, as Cousin Park was not the kind of person to talk metaphysics to.

She finally departed, much to our relief, as we were one and all ready for bed. We escorted her to the hotel and before we were out of earshot we could hear her cackling the news to the other old hens very much as a real barnyard fowl will do when she scratches up some delectable morsel too large to swallow at one gulp. She immediately bruits it abroad, attracting all the chickens on the farm, and then such another noise, pecking, grabbing and clucking ensues, until the choice bit is torn to shreds.

We were very tired but not too tired to applaud Mary Flannagan, who imitated Cousin Park to the life as she recounted the tale to her cronies. Then Mary followed the gossipy monologue with her favourite stunt of barnyard noises, finally ending up with Cousin Park's parting speech anent the Lobster Quadrille and Miss Cox's imprudence in not taking a husband when she had a chance, even if their taste in the classics did not coincide.

CHAPTER XXI
SETTLING UP

The next day, our last at the Beach, such scrubbing, sweeping and dusting went on as was never seen before I am sure. We were determined that Mrs. Rand should not say that girls at best were "goatish." Blanche insisted that she could do all the cleaning herself, but we thought it but fair to turn in and help.

"How could people in one short month collect so much mess?" demanded Dum, as she turned bureau drawers out on the beds and did what she called "picking rags." "Do you s'pose on a desert island we would find ourselves littered up with a lot of doo-dads?"

"Well, Robinson Crusoe collected Friday, besides several other days of the week that I can't remember," answered Dee, "and it seems to me he got a dog and a cat and a parrot, and he certainly 'made him a coat of an old Nannie goat.' He had no luggage at all on his arrival and had much to cart away. And look at Swiss Family Robinson! There was nothing they did not collect in the way of belongings on their desert island, even a wife for one of the boys."

"Do you know, I used to think Swiss Family Robinson was the best book that had ever been written," said I, emerging from the closet with an arm full of shoes.

"Well, I don't know but that it is still," declared Dum. "Wouldn't it be just grand to be cast on a desert island? Of course I mean if Zebedee could be cast along, too."

"Of course we wouldn't be cast without him," said Dee, "Heaven would be more like the other place if Zebedee wasn't there. Goodness, I wish he didn't have to work and we could all stay together all the time!"

"When I grow up a little more and learn how, I am going to sculp such a wonderful statue that Zebedee can stop working." Dum forgot all about the rags she was picking and with the dreamy expression we knew so well, began to ball up a perfectly clean shirt waist as though it were clay and with her sculptor's thumb shape it into I don't know what image of surpassing beauty.

She was rudely awakened from her dream by Dee, who snatched the imaginary clay from her twin, exclaiming:

"Since that happens to be my shirt waist, the one I am going to travel back to Richmond in, I'll thank you to get-rich-quick on one of your own.. or this dirty middy blouse might prove a good medium," and she tossed a very soiled article over Dum's head. It happened to be a middy that she had gone crabbing in, so it was not overly pleasant. Anything was enough to start Tweedles in a romp, and in a minute the air was black with shoes and white with pillows, and what work we had accomplished was in a fair way to be done over.

Annie and I took to the farthest cot for safety and Mary perched upon the railing and egged the warriors to fiercer battle by giving her inimitable dog fight with variations. As is often the case, the non-combatants got the worst of the fight. Dee ducked a pillow, thrown with tremendous force by her opponent, and Annie got it square on her dainty nose, causing that aristocratic feature to bleed profusely.

"Oh, Annie, Annie, I'm so sorry!" wailed Dum.

"It is altogether my fault!" declared Dee. "I had no business ducking!"

"Id's dothing adall," insisted Annie, tightly grasping her offending member, "by old dose always bleeds. Jusd a liddle dab will draw de clared."

"Oh, but I just know it hurts awfully," and Dee raced off for a basin of cold water while Dum rummaged in the debris for some of the gentleman's handkerchiefs that she and Dee always used in common with their father.

Mary insisted upon dropping a large brass door key down the sufferer's back, declaring that nothing stopped nose-bleed so effectively as the shock occasioned by a brass door key dropped down the back.

"I just know it is going to disfigure you for days to come!" exclaimed Dee.

"Oh, I don't bind the loogs but id's just the bordification of being such a duisance," answered the poor girl, as usual embarrassed over being the observed of all observers. And just then in spite of the basin of gore and Annie's pitiful expression and Tweedles' great solicitude, Mary and I went off into uncontrollable giggles.

"I'm not laughing at you, Annie, but at your 'bordification,'" gasped Mary, holding her own nose to give the proper accent; and then everybody laughed and it had the effect described in the nursery rhyme:

 
"Little Tommy Grace
Had a pain in his face
So bad he couldn't learn a letter.
In came Dicky Long,
Singing such a funny song,
Tommy laughed and his face felt much better."
 

Blanche arrived on the scene with a bottle of witch hazel and Annie was made to lie down in the farthest corner with healing cloths bound round her injuries.

"I never heard sech carryings on!" exclaimed the girl. "Mo' like a passel of boys. I couldn't believe my yers that 'twas my young missusses making sech hullybullyboo. That there rent woman come by jes' then, and she rubbered 'til I thought she would sho' twis' her po' white neck off."

Blanche had as frank a dislike to Mrs. Rand as that good woman had for all darkeys, and it was only with the most tactful management that we could keep them from coming to blows on the few occasions when Mrs. Rand came over to inspect our cottage. The white woman was very free in her use of the very objectionable term "nigger," and Blanche on the other hand had an insolent bearing in her presence that was entirely foreign to her usual polite manner and gentle disposition. It seemed strange that two persons as excellent in their way as Mrs. Rand and Blanche should be so antagonistic. They were like two chemicals, innocent and mild until brought together and then such a bubbling and boiling and exploding! Mrs. Rand always entered the house through the kitchen, which in itself was an irritation to Blanche.

"I don't hold to no back-do' company. If'n she calls herself a lady, wherefore don't she entrance like one? What call is she got to be pryin' and appearin' auspiciously into all my intensils? I ain't goin' to leave no mo' dirt than I found."

"Did she come in just now?" asked Dee as Blanche got off the foregoing tirade after having administered to Annie.

"No'm, she never come in! I squared myself in the do'way and she couldn't git by me and she couldn't git over me and Gawd knows she couldn't git under me. I wa'n't goin' to let her or no one else come in my kitchen 'til I got the dislocation indigent to the undue disordinary of yesterday somewhat abated."

"Did she say anything?" laughed Dum.

"Yessum, she said a absolute piece of po'try what I would not defame my lips by repeating to you."

"Oh, please tell us what it was!" we begged.

"Well, 'twas:

 
"'Nigger, nigger, never die,
Black face and shiny eye,
Flat nose and crooked toes,
That's the way the nigger goes.'"
 

"Wasn't that horrid of her?" we cried. "And what did you say?"

"Well, I held my head up same as a white lady, an' I answered her back same as a white lady, an' I called out to her:

 
"'I had a little dog
An' his name was Dash,
'Druther be a nigger
Than po' white trash!'"
 

"Well, I'm glad you got back at her; and now come on and let's get the cottage in such good order that we won't care which way the owner comes in," and Dee gave Blanche a friendly pat on her broad shoulder. The girl left us, her good-humour restored by our sympathy, and if there was a speck of dirt left in that kitchen it would have taken a magnifying glass to find it.

Trunks were soon packed, and we had proceeded to the business of dismantling beds (all but on our porch), when we heard the rasping voice of Mrs. Rand in the living room below, that wily woman having slipped in through the kitchen while Blanche's back was turned.

"Hey – Miss Tucker Twins!! Where's that so-called paw of yours? I come over to go over the inventory with him."

"Inventory! What inventory?" asked Tweedles from the balcony.

"What inventory? Why, land's sakes alive, what are you handin' out to me? Didn't I give him a list of my goods and chattels to be returned to me in the same condition in which they was delivered to him on the fust of the month?"

"Oh, I believe there is a list of things in the blue tea-pot," and Dee raced down the steps and drew out the important document from the beautiful old blue tea-pot on the mantelpiece.

"But, Mrs. Rand, our father has gone back to Richmond, went yesterday, and he told me to tell you to send him the bill for anything that was broken or missing."

"Bill, indeed!" she sniffed. "I don't trust to bills with any of these here tenants. Richmond is Richmond and Willoughby is Willoughby."

"Certainly, Mrs. Rand," said Dee with great dignity, "we will not ask you to trust us for any sum provided we have cash enough to reimburse you. There have been very few things broken and I fancy nothing will be missing. A few water glasses and some cups, I think, are the only things broken."

"Not with a nigger in the kitchen!" said our landlady, rudely. "Yer can't tell me a nigger has gone through a month without bustin' mo' things than that."

"Why, Blanche didn't break the things that have been broken. We did it ourselves. I don't believe Blanche has broken a single thing," exclaimed Dum.

"You is quite exactitude in yo' statement, Miss Dum," said Blanche, appearing in the kitchen door, where she had overheard all of Mrs. Rand's not too complimentary remarks. "I is not been the instructive mimber of the household, and what brokerage has been committed has been performed by you young ladies or yo' papa. I is fractured but one object since I engaged in domestic disuetude and that was a cup without no saucer, and before Gawd it was cracked whin I come."

Blanche no longer looked the mild and peaceful character we had found her to be. Her pleasant gingerbread coloured face was purple with rage, and one of her pigtails, usually tightly wrapped, had come unbound and was standing up in a great woolly bush on the top of her head, giving her very much the appearance of a Zulu warrior in battle regalia. A rolling pin in one hand and a batter cake turner in the other added to her warlike aspect.

"I never seed a nigger yet that didn't say everything she broke was cracked when she come," sniffed Mrs. Rand scornfully.

"Blanche is quite right!" exclaimed Dum. "The cup she broke was cracked, because I cracked it myself. I cracked the cup and broke the saucer the first night at the beach, didn't I, Dee?"

"No, you didn't. I did it myself," said Dee.

"Well, hoity-toity! It looks like you both think you done something fine to bust up the chiny," and Mrs. Rand smiled grimly as she gave an extra twist to her Mrs. Wiggs knot and got out of her capacious pocket a huge pair of brass-rimmed spectacles. "Come on, now, and go over this here inventory. Business is business, and if the chiny is busted, no matter who done it, it is the business of the renters to make good. I ain't a-saying the nigger done it, but I'm a-saying if'n she didn't, she's the fust nigger I ever seed that didn't behave like a bull in a chiny shop, bustin' and breakin' wherever she trod."

But Blanche had not had her say out and she took up the ball and continued:

"I is large, 'tis true, but I is light to locomotion, and brokerage is never been one of my failures. My kitchen is open fer yo' conception at any time, Miss Dee. You kin bring in the rent woman when it suits yo' invention," and with a bow that took in all of us and left out Mrs. Rand, Blanche retired to her domain and lifted up her voice in a doleful hymn.

Everything in the cottage was carefully checked off, living room first and then the sleeping porches. We were thankful indeed that we had cleaned up so well and had all of our accumulated mess out of the way. The old woman complimented us on the appearance of everything. She was not at all an unkind person, except where coloured people were concerned. She seemed to take a motherly interest in us and highly approved of Zebedee.

"Well, you gals is sho' kept my house nice and I must say it is some surprise to me. You look like such harum-scarums that I was fearing you would be worser tenants than them boys – Land sakes, if'n the tick covers ain't clean enough ter use agin. I always changes 'em fer a new tenant, but looks like it would be foolishness to take off perfectly clean things, 'thout spot or speck on 'em. Of course, I'll take off the nigger's tick."

Every time Mrs. Rand said nigger it made me wince. Mammy Susan had brought me up to think that that was a word not to be used in polite society or anywhere else.

"Niggers is the onliest ones what kin say nigger," she used to tell me. "Whin white folks says niggers they is demeaning of themselves, an' they is also paintin' of the nigger blacker than his Maker done see fit to make him."

Blanche's room was in perfect order and I wondered if Mrs. Rand would not give her some praise, but that stern person only sniffed and passed on.

Dishes were next on the list and we ticketed them off easily. Four cups were broken, three saucers and a plate and six water glasses, about a dollar's worth in all, as the china and glass were of the plainest. Then came the kitchen and cooking utensils. We hoped Blanche would go out, but she stood to her guns bravely and refused to desert the ship. Mrs. Rand poked her nose into every crack and crevice and seemed to be hunting dirt which she could not discover. The tins were counted and found O. K.; and then the kitchen spoons and forks were as carefully gone over as though they had been of the finest silver. One iron spoon was worn on the edges and a little bent from the vigorous beating and stirring the batter bread had undergone, and the strictly business Mrs. Rand looked at it dubiously, but finally let it pass along with the "sheep," although her expression was very much what Peter's might be if a goat had butt his way into Paradise.