This surprised her into a sudden laugh, outright and ringing. He looked
down at her sparkling face, brilliant in its mirth as a child's, and
said seriously, "You must instantly think of something perfectly prosaic
and commonplace to say, or I shall be forced to take you in my arms and
kiss you a great many times, which might have Lord knows what effect on
that gloomy-minded ticket-seller back of us who already has his
suspicions."
She rose instantly to the possibilities and said smoothly, swiftly,
whimsically, with the accent of drollery, "I'm very particular about
what sort of frying-pan I use. I insist on having a separate one for the
fritures of fish, and another for the omelets, used only for that: I'm
a very fine and conscientious housekeeper, I'd have you know, and all
the while we lived in Bayonne I ran the house because Mother never got
used to French housekeeping ways. I was the one who went to market . . .
oh, the gorgeous things you get in the Bayonne market, near enough
Spain, you know, for real Malaga grapes with the aroma still on them,
and for Spanish quince-paste. I bossed the old Basque woman we had for
cook and learned how to cook from her, using a great many onions for
everything. And I learned how to keep house by the light of nature,
since it had to be done. And I'm awfully excited about having a house of
my own, just as though I weren't the extremely clever, cynical,
disillusioned, fascinating musical genius everybody knows me to be: only
let me warn you that the old house we are going to live in will need
lots done to it. Your uncle never opened the dreadful room he called the
parlor, and never used the south wing at all, where all the sunshine
comes in. And the pantry arrangements are simply humorous, they're so
inadequate. I don't know how much of that four thousand dollars you are
going to want to spare for remodeling the mill, but I will tell you
now, that I will go on strike if you don't give me a better cook-stove
than your Uncle's Touclé had to work with."
He had been listening with an appreciative grin to her nimble-witted
chatter, but at this he brought her up short by an astonished, "Who had?
What had? What's that . . . Touclé?"
She laughed aloud again, delighted at having startled him into
curiosity. "Touclé. Touclé. Don't you think it a pretty name? Will you
believe me when I say I know all about Ashley?"