Now I admit that _I_ am forgetful. I admit that _I_ am absent-minded, and I furthermore beg to state that with the Jimmies and the Beguelins and Bee tearing subjects for conversation into mental rags and tatters for the admiration and astonishment of the Lombards, I think I might be excused for not noticing that Mary forgot the salad. She forgot it as completely as if salad had never dawned upon the culinary horizon. The cook, not having made it, naturally dismissed it from _her_ mind, but _Mary_ had helped me make it. _Mary_ put it in the ice-box with her own hands. _Mary_ knew how I had worked over it. Drat her!
When all was over, the Angel strolled over to me and murmured:
"I thought you were making that salad for luncheon, dear."
I sprang from my chair as if shot, and stared at him wildly. He regarded me with alarm.
"So I _was_!" I shrieked, in a whisper. I wrung my hands, and so great was my anguish that tears came into my eyes.
"There! There, dearie!" said Aubrey, kindly. "Don"t mind, little girl! It would have been too much with all the rest of your lovely luncheon. It will go _much_ better tonight."
"You are an angel," I said, brokenly, "but I"ll feel a little easier in my mind after I have killed Mary."
It was hot, but I ran all the way to the house. I found Mary. The light of battle was in my eye, and she quailed before I spoke.
"Where was that lobster salad?" I demanded.
She turned pale, and sank into a chair. I simply stood glaring at her.
She peeked through her fingers to see if I were relenting as usual, but as I still looked blood-thirsty, she began to cry. She covered her head with her ap.r.o.n, and rocked herself back and forth.
"I forgot it, Missis dear! Kick me if you want to. I"ll not say I don"t deserve it, but since I burst me stomach I can"t remember anything!"
"Since you _what_?" I gasped, in horror.
Mary took down her ap.r.o.n in triumph, and looked as important as though she had a funeral to go to.
"Didn"t you know, Missis? In my mother"s last sickness--G.o.d rest her soul!--I had to lift her every day, and I burst me stomach. The doctor said so. That"s why I forget things!"
I stood staring at her. She was nodding her head, and smoothing her ap.r.o.n over her knees with a look of the greatest complacency.
I thought of many, many things to say. And in several languages. But all of them put together would have been inadequate, so, without one word, I turned and walked slowly and thoughtfully away.
That did not phase Mary in the least. She had looked for voluble and valuable sympathy--such as generally pours from me on the slightest provocation. She was so disappointed that she grew ugly and broke a soap-dish.
"Aubrey," I said to the Angel, "how is your memory connected with your stomach?"
"Very nearly," he answered, pleasantly. "My stomach reminds me of many things,--when it"s time to eat, and when it"s time to drink."
"So then, if anything happened to that reminder, you might forget even to get dinner if you were a cook, or to serve it if you were a butler?"
"Certainly."
"I see," I answered, thoughtfully.
"If I might beg to inquire the wherefore of this thirst for information--" hazarded the Angel, politely.
"Oh, nothing much. Only Mary says she has burst her stomach, and that"s why she forgets everything."
Fortunately, Aubrey was sitting in his Morris chair. If he had flung himself about in that manner on a bench, he would have broken his back.
"Mary," said Aubrey, when he could speak, "ought to go in a book."
"Mary," I said, with equal emphasis, "ought to go into an asylum."
It was not long after that that old Katie, the cook, came up-stairs, and beckoned me from the room.
"You said, Mrs. Jardine, that you"d never seen b.u.t.ter made. Now I"ve got the first churning from the Guernsey cow in the churn, and if you would like to see it--"
She never finished the sentence, for I rushed past her so that she had to follow me into the milk-room. (Bee wanted me to call it "the dairy.")
I sat by while Katie churned and told stories. Then while she was turning it out, and I was raving over the colour of it, I heard a suspicious sniffing behind me, and behold, there was Mary, with her ap.r.o.n to her eyes, murmuring, brokenly, "My poor dear mother! Oh, my poor dear mother!"
Seeing that she had attracted my attention, she walked away, stumbling over the threshold to emphasize her grief.
"What"s the matter with Mary, Mrs. Jardine?" asked old Katie, wonderingly.
"Her mother used to churn, she told me, and I suppose it brings it all back to her to see you churn," I said, with as straight a face as I could muster.
"Dear me!" said Katie, in high disgust. "_I_ had a mother and _she_ used to churn, but it doesn"t turn me into salt water every time I hear the dasher going!"
Katie is a shrewd woman, so I said nothing in answer to that. Finally Katie lifted her chin--a way she had--and added:
"I"m thinking it sits bad on her mind to see you in here with me, instead of with her!"
As I still said nothing, she apparently repented herself, for she said, a moment later:
"But Mary was mighty fond of her old father and mother. She keeps mementoes of them ahl over the place. She has now what she calls his Polean pitcher--"
"His what?"
"Shure _I_ don"t know! But she says it is. It"s got a man on the outside, and you pours out of his three-cornered hat."
"Oh, yes," I said. "I remember now. What did you say she called it?"
"There it is now, on the shelf above your head. But how it got there, _I_ don"t know. And Mary would be throwing fits if she saw it."
"Why?"
"Because she says her father used to send her every night, when she was a little girl, to get his Polean pitcher filled with beer. She says she minds him every time she looks at it--Gahd rest his soul."
I turned and looked at the little squat figure of Napoleon. It was the pitcher the little man had given Mary for getting our trade for him, when we were first married.
"She cried once when I put some cream in it to make pot-cheese," said Katie. "And she emptied it and washed it and kissed it; then she stood it on th" shelf with her picture of the Pope that you gave her."
Just then Mary, as if suspecting something, appeared at the door. She looked suspiciously from one to the other.
"I was just afther telling the Missis, Mary, how careful you are of the Polean pitcher you used to rush the growler with for your poor dear father," said Katie, with a shy grin that was gone before we fairly saw it.