Miss Billy Married

by Eleanor H. Porter

  "Yes'm. I knew you'd feel that way," stammered Eliza, gratefully. "You see, I couldn't leave him to come alone, and besides, anyhow, I'd have to stay, for mother ain't no more use than a wet dish-rag at such times, she's that scared herself. And she ain't very well, too. So if—if you could get along—"

  "Of course we can! And tell Pete not to worry one bit. I'm so sorry he's sick!"

  "Thank you, ma'am. Then we'll be there some time this evenin'," sighed Eliza.

  From the telephone Billy turned away with a troubled face.

  "Pete is ill," she was saying to herself. "I don't like the looks of it; and he's so faithful he'd come if—" With a little cry Billy stopped short. Then, tremblingly, she sank into the nearest chair. "Calderwell—and he's coming to dinner!" she moaned.

  For two benumbed minutes Billy sat staring at nothing. Then she ran to the telephone and called the Annex.

  Aunt Hannah answered.

  "Aunt Hannah, for heaven's sake, if you love me," pleaded Billy, "send Rosa down instanter! Pete is sick over to South Boston, and Eliza is with him; and Bertram is bringing Hugh Calderwell home to dinner. Can you spare Rosa?"

  "Oh, my grief and conscience, Billy! Of course I can—I mean I could—but Rosa isn't here, dear child! It's her day out, you know."

  "O dear, of course it is! I might have known, if I'd thought; but Pete and Eliza have spoiled me. They never take days out at meal time—both together, I mean—until to-night."

  "But, my dear child, what will you do?"

  "I don't know. I've got to think. I must do something!"

  "Of course you must! I'd come over myself if it wasn't for my cold."

  "As if I'd let you!"

  "There isn't anybody here, only Tommy. Even Alice is gone. Oh, Billy, Billy, this only goes to prove what I've always said, that no woman ought to be a wife until she's an efficient housekeeper; and—"

  "Yes, yes, Aunt Hannah, I know," moaned Billy, frenziedly. "But I am a wife, and I'm not an efficient housekeeper; and Hugh Calderwell won't wait for me to learn. He's coming to-night. To-night! And I've got to do something. Never mind. I'll fix it some way. Good-by!"

  "But, Billy, Billy! Oh, my grief and conscience," fluttered Aunt Hannah's voice across the wires as Billy snapped the receiver into place.

  For the second time that day Billy backed palpitatingly against the wall. Her eyes sought the clock fearfully.

  Fifteen minutes past four. She had an hour and three quarters. She could, of course, telephone Bertram to dine Calderwell at a club or some hotel. But to do this now, the very first time, when it had been her own suggestion that he "bring them home"—no, no, she could not do that! Anything but that! Besides, very likely she could not reach Bertram, anyway. Doubtless he had left the Winthrops' by this time.

  There was Marie. She could telephone Marie. But Marie could not very well come just now, she knew; and then, too, there was Cyril to be taken into consideration. How Cyril would gibe at the wife who had to call in all the neighbors just because her husband was bringing home a friend to dinner! How he would—Well, he shouldn't! He should not have the chance. So, there!

  With a jerk Mrs. Bertram Henshaw pulled herself away from the wall and stood erect. Her eyes snapped, and the very poise of her chin spelled determination.

  Very well, she would show them. Was not Bertram bringing this man home because he was proud of her? Mighty proud he would be if she had to call in half of Boston to get his dinner for him! Nonsense! She would get it herself. Was not this the time, if ever, to be an oak? A vine, doubtless, would lean and cling and telephone, and whine "I can't!" But not an oak. An oak would hold up its head and say "I can!" An oak would go ahead and get that dinner. She would be an oak. She would get that dinner.

  What if she didn't know how to cook bread and cake and pies and things? One did not have to cook bread and cake and pies just to get a dinner—meat and potatoes and vegetables! Besides, she could make peach fritters. She knew she could. She would show them!

  And with actually a bit of song on her lips, Billy skipped up-stairs for her ruffled apron and dust-cap—two necessary accompaniments to this dinner-getting, in her opinion.

  Billy found the apron and dust-cap with no difficulty; but it took fully ten of her precious minutes to unearth from its obscure hiding-place the blue-and-gold "Bride's Helper" cookbook, one of Aunt Hannah's wedding gifts.

  On the way to the kitchen, Billy planned her dinner. As was natural, perhaps, she chose the things she herself would like to eat.

  "I won't attempt anything very elaborate," she said to herself. "It would be wiser to have something simple, like chicken pie, perhaps. I love chicken pie! And I'll have oyster stew first—that is, after the grapefruit. Just oysters boiled in milk must be easier than soup to make. I'll begin with grapefruit with a cherry in it, like Pete fixes it. Those don't have to be cooked, anyhow. I'll have fish—Bertram loves the fish course. Let me see, halibut, I guess, with egg sauce. I won't have any roast; nothing but the chicken pie. And I'll have squash and onions. I can have a salad, easy—just lettuce and stuff. That doesn't have to be cooked. Oh, and the peach fritters, if I get time to make them. For dessert—well, maybe I can find a new pie or pudding in the cookbook. I want to use that cookbook for something, after hunting all this time for it!"

  In the kitchen Billy found exquisite neatness, and silence. The first brought an approving light to her eyes; but the second, for some unapparent reason, filled her heart with vague misgiving. This feeling, however, Billy resolutely cast from her as she crossed the room, dropped her book on to the table, and turned toward the shining black stove.

  There was an excellent fire. Glowing points of light showed that only a good draft was needed to make the whole mass of coal red-hot. Billy, however, did not know this. Her experience of fires was confined to burning wood in open grates—and wood in open grates had to be poked to make it red and glowing. With confident alacrity now, therefore, Billy caught up the poker, thrust it into the mass of coals and gave them a fine stirring up. Then she set back the lid of the stove and went to hunt up the ingredients for her dinner.

  By the time Billy had searched five minutes and found no chicken, no oysters, and no halibut, it occurred to her that her larder was not, after all, an open market, and that one's provisions must be especially ordered to fit one's needs. As to ordering them now—Billy glanced at the clock and shook her head.

  "It's almost five, already, and they'd never get here in time," she sighed regretfully. "I'll have to have something else."

  Billy looked now, not for what she wanted, but for what she could find. And she found: some cold roast lamb, at which she turned up her nose; an uncooked beefsteak, which she appropriated doubtfully; a raw turnip and a head of lettuce, which she hailed with glee; and some beets, potatoes, onions, and grapefruit, from all of which she took a generous supply. Thus laden she went back to the kitchen.

  Spread upon the table they made a brave show.

  "Oh, well, I'll have quite a dinner, after all," she triumphed, cocking her head happily. "And now for the dessert," she finished, pouncing on the cookbook.

  It was while she was turning the leaves to find the pies and puddings that she ran across the vegetables and found the word "beets" staring her in the face. Mechanically she read the line below.

  "Winter beets will require three hours to cook. Use hot water."

  Billy's startled eyes sought the clock.

  Three hours—and it was five, now!

  Frenziedly, then, she ran her finger down the page.

  "Onions, one and one-half hours. Use hot water. Turnips require a long time, but if cut thin they will cook in an hour and a quarter."

  "An hour and a quarter, indeed!" she moaned.

  "Isn't there anything anywhere that doesn't take forever to cook?"

  "Early peas—... green corn—... summer squash—..." mumbled Billy's dry lips. "But what do folks eat in January—January?"

  It was the apparently inoffensive
sentence, "New potatoes will boil in thirty minutes," that brought fresh terror to Billy's soul, and set her to fluttering the cookbook leaves with renewed haste. If it took new potatoes thirty minutes to cook, how long did it take old ones? In vain she searched for the answer. There were plenty of potatoes. They were mashed, whipped, scalloped, creamed, fried, and broiled; they were made into puffs, croquettes, potato border, and potato snow. For many of these they were boiled first—"until tender," one rule said.

  "But that doesn't tell me how long it takes to get 'em tender," fumed Billy, despairingly. "I suppose they think anybody ought to know that—but I don't!" Suddenly her eyes fell once more on the instructions for boiling turnips, and her face cleared. "If it helps to cut turnips thin, why not potatoes?" she cried. "I can do that, anyhow; and I will," she finished, with a sigh of relief, as she caught up half a dozen potatoes and hurried into the pantry for a knife. A few minutes later, the potatoes, peeled, and cut almost to wafer thinness, were dumped into a basin of cold water.

  "There! now I guess you'll cook," nodded Billy to the dish in her hand as she hurried to the stove.

  Chilled by an ominous unresponsiveness, Billy lifted the stove lid and peered inside. Only a mass of black and graying coals greeted her. The fire was out.

  "To think that even you had to go back on me like this!" upbraided Billy, eyeing the dismal mass with reproachful gaze.

  This disaster, however, as Billy knew, was not so great as it seemed, for there was still the gas stove. In the old days, under Dong Ling's rule, there had been no gas stove. Dong Ling disapproved of "devil stoves" that had "no coalee, no woodee, but burned like hellee." Eliza, however, did approve of them; and not long after her arrival, a fine one had been put in for her use. So now Billy soon had her potatoes with a brisk blaze under them.

  In frantic earnest, then, Billy went to work. Brushing the discarded onions, turnip, and beets into a pail under the table, she was still confronted with the beefsteak, lettuce, and grapefruit. All but the beefsteak she pushed to one side with gentle pats.

  "You're all right," she nodded to them. "I can use you. You don't have to be cooked, bless your hearts! But you—!" Billy scowled at the beefsteak and ran her finger down the index of the "Bride's Helper"—Billy knew how to handle that book now.

  "No, you don't—not for me!" she muttered, after a minute, shaking her finger at the tenderloin on the table. "I haven't got any 'hot coals,' and I thought a 'gridiron' was where they played football; though it seems it's some sort of a dish to cook you in, here—but I shouldn't know it from a teaspoon, probably, if I should see it. No, sir! It's back to the refrigerator for you, and a nice cold sensible roast leg of lamb for me, that doesn't have to be cooked. Understand? Cooked," she finished, as she carried the beefsteak away and took possession of the hitherto despised cold lamb.

  Once more Billy made a mad search through cupboards and shelves. This time she bore back in triumph a can of corn, another of tomatoes, and a glass jar of preserved peaches. In the kitchen a cheery bubbling from the potatoes on the stove greeted her. Billy's spirits rose with the steam.

  "There, Spunkie," she said gayly to the cat, who had just uncurled from a nap behind the stove. "Tell me I can't get up a dinner! And maybe we'll have the peach fritters, too," she chirped. "I've got the peach-part, anyway."

  But Billy did not have the peach fritters, after all. She got out the sugar and the flour, to be sure, and she made a great ado looking up the rule; but a hurried glance at the clock sent her into the dining-room to set the table, and all thought of the peach fritters was given up.

  Chapter X - The Dinner Billy Got

  *

  At five minutes of six Bertram and Calderwell came. Bertram gave his peculiar ring and let himself in with his latchkey; but Billy did not meet him in the hall, nor in the drawing-room. Excusing himself, Bertram hurried up-stairs. Billy was not in her room, nor anywhere on that floor. She was not in William's room. Coming down-stairs to the hall again, Bertram confronted William, who had just come in.

  "Where's Billy?" demanded the young husband, with just a touch of irritation, as if he suspected William of having Billy in his pocket.

  William stared slightly.

  "Why, I don't know. Isn't she here?"

  "I'll ask Pete," frowned Bertram.

  In the dining-room Bertram found no one, though the table was prettily set, and showed half a grapefruit at each place. In the kitchen—in the kitchen Bertram found a din of rattling tin, an odor of burned food—, a confusion of scattered pots and pans, a frightened cat who peered at him from under a littered stove, and a flushed, disheveled young woman in a blue dust-cap and ruffled apron, whom he finally recognized as his wife.

  "Why, Billy!" he gasped.

  Billy, who was struggling with something at the sink, turned sharply.

  "Bertram Henshaw," she panted, "I used to think you were wonderful because you could paint a picture. I even used to think I was a little wonderful because I could write a song. Well, I don't any more! But I'll tell you who is wonderful. It's Eliza and Rosa, and all the rest of those women who can get a meal on to the table all at once, so it's fit to eat!"

  "Why, Billy!" gasped Bertram again, falling back to the door he had closed behind him. "What in the world does this mean?"

  "Mean? It means I'm getting dinner," choked Billy. "Can't you see?"

  "But—Pete! Eliza!"

  "They're sick—I mean he's sick; and I said I'd do it. I'd be an oak. But how did I know there wasn't anything in the house except stuff that took hours to cook—only potatoes? And how did I know that they cooked in no time, and then got all smushy and wet staying in the water? And how did I know that everything else would stick on and burn on till you'd used every dish there was in the house to cook 'em in?"

  "Why, Billy!" gasped Bertram, for the third time. And then, because he had been married only six months instead of six years, he made the mistake of trying to argue with a woman whose nerves were already at the snapping point. "But, dear, it was so foolish of you to do all this! Why didn't you telephone? Why didn't you get somebody?"

  Like an irate little tigress, Billy turned at bay.

  "Bertram Henshaw," she flamed angrily, "if you don't go up-stairs and tend to that man up there, I shall scream. Now go! I'll be up when I can."

  And Bertram went.

  It was not so very long, after all, before Billy came in to greet her guest. She was not stately and imposing in royally sumptuous blue velvet and ermine; nor yet was she cozy and homy in bronze-gold crêpe de Chine and swan's-down. She was just herself in a pretty little morning house gown of blue gingham. She was minus the dust-cap and the ruffled apron, but she had a dab of flour on the left cheek, and a smutch of crock on her forehead. She had, too, a cut finger on her right hand, and a burned thumb on her left. But she was Billy—and being Billy, she advanced with a bright smile and held out a cordial hand—not even wincing when the cut finger came under Calderwell's hearty clasp.

  "I'm glad to see you," she welcomed him. "You'll excuse my not appearing sooner, I'm sure, for—didn't Bertram tell you?—I'm playing Bridget to-night. But dinner is ready now, and we'll go down, please," she smiled, as she laid a light hand on her guest's arm.

  Behind her, Bertram, remembering the scene in the kitchen, stared in sheer amazement. Bertram, it might be mentioned again, had been married six months, not six years.

  What Billy had intended to serve for a "simple dinner" that night was: grapefruit with cherries, oyster stew, boiled halibut with egg sauce, chicken pie, squash, onions, and potatoes, peach fritters, a "lettuce and stuff" salad, and some new pie or pudding. What she did serve was: grapefruit (without the cherries), cold roast lamb, potatoes (a mush of sogginess), tomatoes (canned, and slightly burned), corn (canned, and very much burned), lettuce (plain); and for dessert, preserved peaches and cake (the latter rather dry and stale). Such was Billy's dinner.

  The grapefruit everybody ate. The cold lamb too, met with a hearty receptio
n, especially after the potatoes, corn, and tomatoes were served—and tasted. Outwardly, through it all, Billy was gayety itself. Inwardly she was burning up with anger and mortification. And because she was all this, there was, apparently, no limit to her laughter and sparkling repartee as she talked with Calderwell, her guest—the guest who, according to her original plans, was to be shown how happy she and Bertram were, what a good wife she made, and how devoted and satisfied Bertram was in his home.

  William, picking at his dinner—as only a hungry man can pick at a dinner that is uneatable—watched Billy with a puzzled, uneasy frown. Bertram, choking over the few mouthfuls he ate, marked his wife's animated face and Calderwell's absorbed attention, and settled into gloomy silence.

  But it could not continue forever. The preserved peaches were eaten at last, and the stale cake left. (Billy had forgotten the coffee—which was just as well, perhaps.) Then the four trailed up-stairs to the drawing-room.

  At nine o'clock an anxious Eliza and a remorseful, apologetic Pete came home and descended to the horror the once orderly kitchen and dining-room had become. At ten, Calderwell, with very evident reluctance, tore himself away from Billy's gay badinage, and said good night. At two minutes past ten, an exhausted, nerve-racked Billy was trying to cry on the shoulders of both Uncle William and Bertram at once.

  "There, there, child, don't! It went off all right," patted Uncle William.

  "Billy, darling," pleaded Bertram, "please don't cry so! As if I'd ever let you step foot in that kitchen again!"

  At this Billy raised a tear-wet face, aflame with indignant determination.

  "As if I'd ever let you keep me from it, Bertram Henshaw, after this!" she contested. "I'm not going to do another thing in all my life but cook! When I think of the stuff we had to eat, after all the time I took to get it, I'm simply crazy! Do you think I'd run the risk of such a thing as this ever happening again?"

  Chapter XI - Calderwell Does Some Questioning

  *