Tonio, Son of the Sierras | Page 7

daisy, all creamy white with--but you wouldn't understand----"
"What on earth kept them out so long?"
"Didn't I tell you? Why, they went away to Bennett's ranch. Couldn't find a vestige of vegetables nearer. Mrs. Bennett has a little patch where she raises lettuce and radishes. The orderly carried a basket full of truck, and leaves and flowers, poppies and cactus, you know, and you've no idea how pretty they've made the table look."
Stannard sniffed. "Take their Sauterne hot or lukewarm?" he asked. "Fancy a dinner without ice, fruit or cream!"
"Of course they haven't white wine here, Luce! But there's claret--famous claret, too, and the water in the big olla's even cooler than the spring. They'll have French dressing for the salad. They have tomato soup even you couldn't growl at, and roast chicken, with real potatoes, and petits pois, and corn, and olives; then salad cool as the spring; then there's to be such an omelette soufflée--and coffee!--but it's the way the table looks, Luce!"
"Men don't care how a thing looks, so long as it tastes right. How does it look?"
"So white and fresh, and sprinkled with green and purple and crimson, the leaves and the poppies, you know. She----" But Mrs. Stannard broke off suddenly. "What is it, Wettstein?" she asked, for their own particular chef, a German trooper, with elementary culinary gifts, appeared in the hallway.
"It's Suey, mattam, says would Mrs. Stannard come over a minute. He's stuck, mattam."
"Stuck! Heavens! how?" cried Mrs. Stannard, up at once in alarm, and vanishing through the dim light of the blanketed window. The presumably punctured Chinaman was even then in full flight for his own kitchen door, some fifty feet away, and Mrs. Stannard followed. No Roman in Rome's quarrel was ever more self-sacrificing than were our army women of the old days in their helpfulness. Had the hounds ravished the roast again, as once already had happened? If so, the Stannard dinner stood ready to replace it, even though she and her captain had to fall back on what could be borrowed from the troop kitchen. No, the oven door was open, the precious chickens, brown, basted and done to a turn, were waiting Suey's deft hands to shift them to the platter. (No need to heat it even on a December day.) Mrs. Stannard's quick and comprehensive glance took in every detail. The "stick" was obviously figurative--mere vernacular--yet something serious, for Suey's olive-brown skin was jaundiced with worry, and the face of Doyle, the soldier striker, as he came hurrying back from the banquet board, was beading with the sweat of mental torment. Soup, it seems, was already served, and Doyle burst forth, hoarse whispering, before ever he caught sight of the visiting angel.
"Sure I can't, Suey! The General's sittin' on it!"
And Suey's long-nailed Mongolian talons went up in despair as he turned appealingly to their rescuer.
"Sitting on what, Doyle? Quick!" said Mrs. Stannard.
"The sherry, ma'am! The doctor sent it over wid his comps to s'prise him, an' my orders was to fill the little glasses when I'd took in the soup, an' I put it under the barrel chair----"
But Mrs. Stannard had heard enough. Even though convulsed with merriment, she seized a pencil and scribbled a little line on a card. "Give this to Mrs. Archer," she said, and a moment later, in the midst of his first story, the veteran was checked by these placid words from the head of the table:
"Pardon me, dear, but you are on the lid of the wine cooler. Let Doyle get at it a moment."
The general was not the nimblest-witted man in the service, but long experience had taught him the wisdom of prompt observance of any suggestion that came from his wife. Dropping his napkin, and the thread of his tale, he rose to his feet. Blushing furiously, Doyle bent, and with vigorous effort pried off a circular, perforated top, revealing a dark, cylindrical space beneath, from the depths of which he lifted a dripping bucket of galvanized iron, and sped, thus laden, away to the kitchen, to the music of Mrs. Archer's merry laughter and a guffaw of joy from the general's lips.
"How came you to put it there, sir?" demanded he, a moment later, as Doyle circumnavigated the table, filling, as ordered, the five little glasses with fragrant Amontillado. "I must tell you, gentlemen, this is one of the pleasant surprises that most admirable woman yonder is forever putting up on me. Life would be a desert without such."
"Indeed it wasn't mine!" expostulated madam, "though I'm deeply indebted to somebody. Who was it, Doyle?"
"Docther Bentley, ma'am. He said I was to keep it dark, ma'am--'an' in the coolest place I could find----"
But here the peals of laughter silenced the words and rang the glad tidings to listening, waiting ears