Tonio, Son of the Sierras | Page 7

were promptly welcomed.
"Now, Luce, they're going to have a very nice dinner," protested Mrs.
Stannard. "I was in there helping over an hour, and Mrs. Archer's a
wonder! Even if the dinner didn't amount to much, there would be
Lilian."
"They can't eat her," persisted, grimly, the man.
"She looks sweet enough to eat," responded the woman. "You ought to
see her. After a six hours' ride she looks fresh as a 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,