"Well then," said Kate, "grump at home over your beastly Virgil." Mother,
who understood as only mothers can, said nothing, and prepared my
favourite dishes for dinner.
The meal over, and the house-place 'tidied,' which seldom meant more than
the harassing of a few stray specks of dust, Kate in her best fripperies
and mother in her churchgoing gown started for the vicar's. I stood in the
porch and watched them across the cobbled yard and along the road till
they dropped out of sight beyond the bridge.
Then Kate's share of these introductory events became manifest. Search
high, search low, there was no sign of my dear, dumpy Virgil, in yellowing
parchment with red edges. I found Kate's cookery-book, and would have
flung it through the window, but my eye caught the quaint inscription on
the fly-leaf, in her big, pot-hooky handwriting:
"KATHERINE WHEATMAN, her book,
God give her grease to larn to cook.
At the Hanyards.
Jul. 1739."
The simple words stung me like angry hornets. Our red-headed Kate was no
scholar, but at any rate her reading was more useful in our little world
than mine; for this was where she learned the artistry of the dainties and
devices Jack Dobson and I were so fond of.
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