Betty's Happy Year

“All right,” said Betty; “I’ll be hostess, then, until she comes. You’ve heard Lena speak of me?”

“Gracious, yes! I’ve heard you so highly lauded that I doubt if you can live up to the angelic reputation she gives you!”

“Oh, yes, I can,” said Betty, laughing. “Now I’ll be Betty Crusoe, and this house is my desert island. You’re Man Friday, and you must do exactly as I say.”

“I live but to obey your decrees,” said young Pennington, with a deep bow.

“Good! Now, first of all, I’m starving. Are you?”

“I even starve at your command. I am famished.”

“I believe you are, really. Let’s see what we can find.”

Together they went to the pantry, and found cold chicken and peach-pie, a bowl of custard, and various odds and ends of tempting-looking dishes.

“Let’s set the table first,” cried Betty, gleefully. “Do you know where the dishes are?”

“I’ve never really set the table,” Pennington said, “but I’m quite sure the dishes are in the sideboard or the glass cupboard.”

“How clever you are!” said Betty, laughingly; “I do believe you’re right!”

They easily found linen, silver, and glass, and Betty set the table daintily for two.

“Now,” she said, “I’ll get the luncheon. A man’s only a bother in the kitchen. You go and do your sketching until I call you.”

But Hal Pennington was not so easily disposed of.

“No,” he said; “I’ll gather some flowers, and then I’ll arrange them as a decoration for our feast.”

“Do,” said Betty, “that will be lovely!”

Hal went out to the garden, and returned with gay blossoms, which he arranged deftly and with good taste on the table.

“What are you doing?” he said a little later, as he drifted into the kitchen, where Betty, with her sleeves rolled back, was whisking away at something in a bowl.

“Making a salad; don’t you like it?”

“Love it! Let me help.”

“You can’t help, I tell you. Go away, Man Friday, until I call you.”

“No, please let me help,” coaxed Hal. “I just love to cook. Pooh, maybe you think I don’t know how! See here, I’ll make an omelet!”

Before Betty knew what he was about he had broken several eggs into a bowl.

“Oh, don’t!” she cried, laughing at his misdirected energy. “We don’t want an omelet! We’ve bushels of things to eat already!”

“Then I’ll make coffee,” said Hal, quite unabashed. “These eggs will do for coffee just as well.”

“Not six of them, goose!” cried Betty.

“Why, yes, you always put eggs in coffee.”

“Oh, just one, or part of one, to clear it!”

“Well, if one’s good, more’s better; anyway, I’m going to make coffee.”

Taking a white apron from a nail, Hal tied it round himself, and proceeded to make what turned out to be really good coffee, though he used only a small portion of the eggs in it.

“You are a good cook,” said Betty, as she watched his experienced movements.

“Sure! I learned how in camp. All our fellows know how to cook.”

The luncheon was daintily served. Betty had garnished the salad with nasturtium leaves and red blossoms, and edged the platter of cold chicken with a wreath of parsley.

They had taken out the Careys’ best china and cut glass, and the table looked lovely indeed.

“My! What a spread!” said Hal, looking admiringly at it. “I didn’t suppose you could do things like that.”

“Why not?” said Betty, turning wondering eyes on him. “What made you think I couldn’t?”

Hal reddened a little, but said honestly:

“’Cause Lena said you’re such a fearfully rich girl, and I sort of thought you’d be – oh, you know – above fussing in the kitchen.”

Betty laughed merrily.

“I love fussing in the kitchen,” she said, “and I think every girl ought to know how to cook. At least she ought to have sense enough to get together a cold luncheon like this when everything’s provided.”

“Yes, I know; but you’ve made everything look so pretty. I want to eat dishes and all!”

Betty dimpled with pleasure at his praise, and they sat down to the pretty feast, to which they did full justice.

“I wonder when the Careys will come,” Betty remarked, as they lingered over the coffee.

“I wish they’d never come,” said Hal. “I think it would be fine if we were really castaways, and nobody ever came to rescue us. Just like Robinson Crusoe and his Man Friday.”

“But we haven’t any goat,” said Betty, laughing. “The goat was one of the principal characters, you know.”

“Well, likely a goat would wander in some day. I say, can you sing?”

“Yes,” said Betty, smiling as she thought of how she had sung when she first entered the house; “I sing some songs pretty well.”

“I wager you do. Let’s go in by the piano and sing duets.”

“Didn’t you hear me singing this morning? I sat down at the piano when I first arrived.”

“No; I was out sketching. I only came in the house a few minutes before I found you.”