The Second Violin Part 7

"Yes, when it isn't burned," agreed Charlotte, with a laugh. Things had gone fairly well with her that day, and her spirits had risen accordingly.

"Burning's a thing that will happen to the best cooks once in a while.

'Twas just day before yesterday I blacked a pumpkin pie so the doctor poked his fun at me all the time he was eating it," said the housekeeper, with a tactful disregard for the full truth, which was that a refractory small patient in the office had driven the doctor to require her a.s.sistance for a longer period than was consistent with attention to her oven.

"Oh, did you?" asked Charlotte, eagerly. "That encourages me. Doctor Churchill told me he had the finest cook in the state, and I've been envying you ever since."

"Doctor Churchill had better be careful how he brags," Mrs. Fields declared, much gratified. "Well, now, I'll tell you what you do. It ain't but a step across the two back yards. When you get in a quandary how to cook anything--how long to give it or whether to bake or boil--you just run across and ask me. I ain't one o' the prying kind--the doctor'll tell you that--and you needn't be afraid it'll go any further. I know how hard it must be for a young girl like you to take the care of a house on yourself, and I'll be pleased to show you anything I can."

"That's very good of you," said Charlotte, gratefully, as Mrs. Fields went briskly down the steps; and she really felt that it was. She would have resented the appearance of almost any of her neighbours at her back door with an offer of help, suspecting that they had come to use their eyes, and afterward their tongues, in criticism. But something about Mrs. Hepsibah Fields disarmed her at once. She could not tell why.

"This gingerbread is perfect," said Celia, an hour later, when Charlotte had brought up her supper. "You are improving every day. But it frets me not to have you come to me for help. I could plan things for you, and teach you all the little I know. I'm doing so well now, the doctor says I may get down-stairs on the couch by next week. Then you certainly must let me do my part."

But Charlotte shook her head obstinately. "I'm going to fight it through myself. I'd rather. You've enough to do--writing letters."

When Lanse came into Celia's room that evening, his first words were merry.

"What I'm anxious to know," he said, "is what you did with your rice pudding. Charlotte says you ate it--and the inference was that it was good to eat. So I ate mine--manfully, I a.s.sure you. But it was a bitter dose."

"Poor little girl! She tries so hard, Lanse. And the gingerbread was very good."

"So it was. It helped take out the taste of the pudding. Did you honestly eat that pudding?"

"See here." Celia beckoned him close. She reached a cautious hand under her pillow and drew out her soap-dish. "Please get rid of it for me,"

she whispered, "and wash the dish. I couldn't bear not to seem to eat it, so I slipped it in there."

Striving to smother his mirth, Lanse bore the soap-dish away. Returning with it, he carefully replaced the soap and set the dish on the stand, where it had been within Celia's reach. "I wish I had had a soap-dish at the table," he remarked, "but the cook's eye was upon me, and I had to stand up to it. But see here. I've a letter for you--from Uncle Rayburn."

Celia stretched an eager hand, for a letter from Uncle John Rayburn--middle-aged, a bachelor, and an ex-army officer, retired by an incurable injury which did not make him the less the best uncle in the world--could not fail to be welcome. But she had not read a page before she dropped the sheet and stared helplessly and anxiously at Lanse.

"What's up?" he asked.

"Why, Uncle Rayburn writes that he would like to come to spend the winter with us," answered Celia.

"What luck!"

"Luck--with Charlotte in the kitchen?"

"Uncle Ray is a crack-a-jack of a cook himself. His board bill will help out like oil on a dry axle, and if we don't have a lot of fun, then Uncle Ray has changed as--I know he hasn't."

CHAPTER V

"Two cripples," declared Capt. John Rayburn--honourably discharged from active service in the United States Army on account of permanent disability from injuries received in the Philippines,--"two cripples should be able to keep a household properly stirred up. I've been here five days now, and my soul longs for some frivolity."

He leaned back in his big wicker armchair and looked quizzically across at his niece Celia, who lay upon her couch at the other side of the room. She gave him a somewhat pale-faced smile in return. Four weeks of enforced quiet were beginning to tell on her.

"Some frivolity," repeated Captain Rayburn, as Charlotte came to the door of the room. "What do you say, Charlie girl? Shall we have some fun?"

"Dear me, yes, Uncle Ray," Charlotte responded, promptly, "if you can think how!"

"I can. Is there a birthday or anything that we may celebrate? I've no compunction about getting up festivities on any pretext, but if there happened to be a birthday handy--"

"November--yes. Why, we had forgotten all about it! Lanse's birthday is the fourth. That's--"

"Day after to-morrow. Good! Can you make him a birthday-cake? If not, I--"

"Oh, yes, I can!" cried Charlotte, eagerly. "I've just learned an orange-cake."

"All right. Then we'll order a few little things from town, and have a jollification. Not a very big one, on account of the lady on the couch there, who reminds me at the moment of a water-lily whom some one has picked and then left on the stern seat in the sun. She looks very sweet, but a trifle limp."

Celia's smile was several degrees brighter than the previous one had been. n.o.body could resist Uncle Ray when he began to exert himself to cheer people up.

He was a young, or an old, bachelor, according to one's point of view, being not yet forty, and looking, in spite of the past suffering which had brought into his chestnut hair two patches of gray at the temples, very much like a bright-faced boy with an irrepressible spirit of energy and interest in the life about him. It could hardly be doubted that Capt. John Rayburn, apparently invalided for life and cut off from the activity which had been his dearest delight, must have his hours of depression, but n.o.body had ever caught him in one of them.

"I should like some music at this festival," Captain Rayburn went on.

"Is the orchestra out of practice?"

"We haven't played for six weeks," Charlotte said. "And Celia's first violin--"

"You couldn't play, bolstered up?"

Celia shook her head. "I should be tired in ten minutes."

"I'm not so sure of that, but we'll see. Anyhow, I've the old flute here--"

"Oh, fine!" cried Charlotte.

"Suppose we ask Doctor Forester out, and your young doctor here next door, and two or three of your girl friends, and a boy and girl or two for Jeff and Just."

"What a funny mixture, Uncle Ray! Doctor Forester and Norman Carter, Just's chum, and Carolyn Houghton?"

"Funny, is it?" inquired Captain Rayburn, undisturbed. "Now do you know, that's my ideal of a well-planned company, particularly when all the family are to be here. Invite somebody for each one, mix 'em all up, play some jolly games, and you'll find Doctor Forester vying with Norman Carter for the prize, and enjoying it equally well. It sharpens up the young wits to be pitted against the older ones, and it--well, it burnishes the elder rapiers and keeps them keen."

"All right, this is your party," agreed Charlotte, and she went back to her duties.

"You're not afraid it will be too much for you, little girl?" Captain Rayburn asked Celia, whose smile had faded, and who lay with her head turned away.

"Oh--no."

"Mercury a little low in the tube this morning?"

"Just a little."

"Any good reason why?"