Come Out of the Kitchen! A Romance

								

more embarrassed than he cared to remember by Mrs. Falkener's assistance
in the real estate office, and he decided to begin his new housekeeping
without her advice. He would, indeed, have dispensed with the
companionship even of Tucker for a day or two, but that would have been
impossible without a direct refusal, and Burton was unwilling to hurt
the feelings of so true and loyal a friend, not only of his own but of
his father before him.
The dignified butler and the irrepressible boy, Brindlebury, ran down
the steps to meet them, and certainly they had no reason to complain of
their treatment; bags were carried up and unstrapped, baths drawn,
clothes laid out with the most praiseworthy promptness.
Tucker had advocated a preliminary tour of inspection.
"It is most important," he murmured to Crane, "to give these people the
idea from the start that you cannot be deceived or imposed upon." But
Crane refused even to consider such questions until he had had a bath
and dinner.
The plan of the old house was very simple. On the right of the front
door was the drawing-room, on the left a small library and a room which
had evidently been used as an office. The stairs went up in the center,
shallow and broad, winding about a square well. The dining-room ran
across the back of the house.
When Tucker came down dressed for dinner, he found Crane was ahead of
him. He was standing in the drawing-room bending so intently over
something on a table that Tucker, who was not entirely without
curiosity, came and bent over it, too, and even the butler, who had come
to announce dinner, craned his neck in that direction.
It was a miniature, set in an old-fashioned frame of gold and pearls. It
represented a young woman in a mauve tulle ball dress, full in the skirt
and cut off the shoulders, as was the fashion in the days before the
war. She wore a wreath of fuchsias, one of which trailing down just
touched her bare shoulder.
"Well," said Tucker contemptuously, "you don't consider that a work of
art, do you?"
Burton remained as one entranced.
"It reminds me of some one I know," he answered.
"It is quite obviously a fancy picture," replied Tucker, who was
something of a connoisseur. "Look at those upturned eyes, and that hand.
Did you ever see a live woman with such a tiny hand?"
"Yes, once," said Crane, but his guest did not notice him.
"The sentimentality of the art of that period," Tucker continued, "which
is so plainly manifested in the poetry----"
"Beg pardon, sir," said Smithfield, "the soup is served."
Crane reluctantly tore himself from the picture and sat down at table,
and such is the materialism of our day that he was evidently immediately
compensated.
"By Jove," he said, "what a capital purée!"
Even Tucker, who, under Mrs. Falkener's tuition, had intended to find
the food uneatable, was obliged to confess its merits.
"I say," said Crane to Smithfield, "tell the cook, will you, that I