Tommy and Co. | Page 9

cooking. That will give you more
time to--to attend to other things, Tommy--Jane, I mean."
"What other things?" chin in the air.
"The--the keeping of the rooms in order, Tommy. The--the dusting."
"Don't want twenty-four hours a day to dust four rooms."
"Then there are messages, Tommy. It would be a great advantage to me
to have someone I could send on a message without feeling I was
interfering with the housework."
"What are you driving at?" demanded Tommy. "Why, I don't have half
enough to do as it is. I can do all--"
Peter put his foot down. "When I say a thing, I mean a thing. The
sooner you understand that, the better. How dare you argue with me!
Fiddle-de-dee!" For two pins Peter would have employed an expletive
even stronger, so determined was he feeling.
Tommy without another word left the room. Peter looked at Elizabeth
and winked.
Poor Peter! His triumph was short-lived. Five minutes later, Tommy
returned, clad in the long, black skirt, supported by the cricket belt, the
blue garibaldi cut decollete, the pepper-and-salt jacket, the worsted
comforter, the red lips very tightly pressed, the long lashes over the
black eyes moving very rapidly.
"Tommy" (severely), "what is this tomfoolery?"

"I understand. I ain't no good to you. Thanks for giving me a trial. My
fault."
"Tommy" (less severely), "don't be an idiot."
"Ain't an idiot. 'Twas Emma. Told me I was good at cooking. Said I'd
got an aptitude for it. She meant well."
"Tommy" (no trace of severity), "sit down. Emma was quite right. Your
cooking is--is promising. As Emma puts it, you have aptitude.
Your--perseverance, your hopefulness proves it."
"Then why d'ye want to get someone else in to do it?"
If Peter could have answered truthfully! If Peter could have replied:
"My dear, I am a lonely old gentleman. I did not know it until-- until
the other day. Now I cannot forget it again. Wife and child died many
years ago. I was poor, or I might have saved them. That made me hard.
The clock of my life stood still. I hid away the key. I did not want to
think. You crept to me out of the cruel fog, awakened old dreams. Do
not go away any more"--perhaps Tommy, in spite of her fierce
independence, would have consented to be useful; and thus Peter might
have gained his end at less cost of indigestion. But the penalty for being
an anti-sentimentalist is that you must not talk like this even to yourself.
So Peter had to cast about for other methods.
"Why shouldn't I keep two servants if I like?" It did seem hard on the
old gentleman.
"What's the sense of paying two to do the work of one? You would
only be keeping me on out of charity." The black eyes flashed. "I ain't a
beggar."
"And you really think, Tommy--I should say Jane, you can manage
the--the whole of it? You won't mind being sent on a message, perhaps
in the very middle of your cooking. It was that I was thinking of,
Tommy--some cooks would."

"You go easy," advised him Tommy, "till I complain of having too
much to do."
Peter returned to his desk. Elizabeth looked up. It seemed to Peter that
Elizabeth winked.
The fortnight that followed was a period of trouble to Peter, for Tommy,
her suspicions having been aroused, was sceptical of "business"
demanding that Peter should dine with this man at the club, lunch with
this editor at the Cheshire Cheese. At once the chin would go up into
the air, the black eyes cloud threateningly. Peter, an unmarried man for
thirty years, lacking experience, would under cross-examination
contradict himself, become confused, break down over essential points.
"Really," grumbled Peter to himself one evening, sawing at a mutton
chop, "really there's no other word for it--I'm henpecked."
Peter that day had looked forward to a little dinner at a favourite
restaurant, with his "dear old friend Blenkinsopp, a bit of a gourmet,
Tommy--that means a man who likes what you would call elaborate
cooking!"--forgetful at the moment that he had used up "Blenkinsopp"
three days before for a farewell supper, "Blenkinsopp" having to set out
the next morning for Egypt. Peter was not facile at invention. Names in
particular had always been a difficulty to him.
"I like a spirit of independence," continued Peter to himself. "Wish she
hadn't quite so much of it. Wonder where she got it from."
The situation was becoming more serious to Peter than he cared to
admit. For day by day, in spite of her tyrannies, Tommy was growing
more and more indispensable to Peter. Tommy was the first audience
that for thirty years had laughed at Peter's jokes; Tommy was the first
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