“Oh! I am so tired of both boarding houses and restaurants. In the former they never have what one likes—and ah! such steak!—while in the latter you have to pick out all the cheap dishes, or ruin yourself at a meal.”
Cyn laughed.
“I assure you I can appreciate your feelings, from sad experience! I, myself, am positively longing for a nice sirloin steak.” Then, a sudden thought striking her, “I will tell you what we will do, Nat, we will have a little feast!”
“A feast?” repeated Nattie, not exactly comprehending.
“Yes—I have a little gas stove—low be it said, lest Mrs. Simonson hear and bring in a terrific bill for extra gas!—I use it sometimes to cook my dinner, when I do not feel like going out, and why should we not have a feast all to ourselves some day? and the sirloin steak shall be forthcoming! and what do you say to Charlotte Russe? In short, we will have everything we can think of, and you shall be assistant cook!”
“That would be splendid!” cried Nattie, delighted, “only it will have to be some Sunday, as that is my only leisure day, you know.”
“All the better, for then we will be less liable to intrusion,” responded Cyn, gayly. “So make a memorandum to that effect, for next week. We must not let Mrs. Simonson know, however, on account of the gas stove; I pay her too much rent now. I am afraid we shall have a little difficulty about dishes. The few I have are not exactly real Sevres china, or even decently conventional. But—”
“Oh! never mind the dishes!” interrupted Nattie. “Anything will do! I have myself a cracked tumbler, and a spoon, that will perhaps be useful for something.”
Agreeing therefore to hold dishes in strict contempt, the following Sunday found the two girls with closed doors, in the midst of great preparations for a truly Bohemian feast, as Cyn termed it; Nattie with her crimps tied down in a blue handkerchief, and Cyn with her sleeves rolled up, and an old skirt of a dress doing duty as apron.
“Let me see,” said Nattie merrily, taking account of stock. “Two pounds of steak—the first cut of the sirloin, I think you said?—waiting, expectant of making glad our hearts, on the rocking-chair, potatoes in plebeian lowliness under the table, tomatoes and two pies on your trunk, Charlotte Russes—delicious Charlotte Russes—where? Ah!—on your bonnet-box, in a plate ordinarily used as a card receiver, and sugar, butter, et cetera, and et cetera lying around almost anywhere, and the figs, oranges and homely, but necessary bread, where are they? I see, on top of ‘Dombey & Son!’ ”
“And our dishes will not quarrel, because thev are none of them any relation to each other!” laughed Cyn, as she peeled the tomatoes. “I fear goblets will have to take upon themselves the duties of cups, and that cracked tumbler of yours must be used for something. I am sorry that saucepan is so dilapidated, but it is the best I own!”
“And in that saucepan we must both boil the potatoes and stew the tomatoes. Won’t one cool while the other is doing?” queried Nattie, hovering lovingly over the steak.
“I think not,” Cyn answered. “You won’t mind the coffee being boiled in a tin can, once the repository of preserved peaches, will you?”
“Ah, no!” replied Nattie emphatically, and sawing at the steak with a very dull knife, without a handle. “It will be just as good when it’s poured out.”
“I had a coffeepot once, but I melted the nose off and forgot to buy another yesterday,” Cyn said, putting on the potatoes.
“We will call our contrivance a coffee-urn; it sounds aristocratic,” suggested Nattie, as she cleared the books from the least shaky table, and spread it with three towels, in lieu of a tablecloth. “But what shall we do for plates to put the pies on?”
“Take those two wooden box covers in the closet,” promptly responded Cyn. “That is right, and see, here is room also for the coffee—pardon me, I had almost said commonplace coffeepot!”
“But the tomato! what can we pour that in?” suddenly exclaimed Nattie, with great concern.
Cyn scanned every object in the room with dismay.
“The—the washbowl!” she insinuated at last, determined not to be daunted.
“Don’t you think it rather large? to say nothing of its being too suggestive?” said Nattie, laughing.
Cyn did not press the point, but shook her head, dubiously.
“I have it!” cried Nattie, “there is a fruit-dish in my room.”
“Just the thing!” interrupted Cyn ecstatically, “I will run and bring it, if you will attend to the cooking.”
“Look out for Miss Kling,” said Nattie, warningly; “if she catches a glimpse of you making off with my fruit-dish, she will never rest until she finds out everything.”
“Rely on me for secrecy and dispatch,” said Cyn, going. “If she sees me, I will mention nuts and raisins; merely mention them, you know.”
But Miss Kling, for once, was napping; perhaps dreaming of him Cyn called the Torpedo—Celeste’s father—and she obtained the dish, reached her own door again without being seen by anyone except the Duchess, and was congratulating herself on her good luck, when suddenly, like an apparition, Quimby stood before her.
Cyn started, murmured something about “oranges,” slipped the soap-dish she had also confiscated into her pocket, and tried to make the big fruit-dish appear as small as possible.
She might, however, have spared herself any uneasiness, for this always the most unobservant of mortals, was too much overburdened with some affair of his own, to notice even a two-quart dish.
“Oh! I—I beg pardon, I—I was coming with a a—request to your room,” he said eagerly. “I—would it be too much to—to bring a friend, he knows no one here, and I am sure he and you would fraternize at once, if I might bring him, you know.”
“Certainly—yes!” replied Cyn, too anxious to get away to pay much attention to his words,
