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The New Forest Spy, a fiction by George Manville Fenn |
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Chapter 6. A Good Appetite |
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_ CHAPTER SIX. A GOOD APPETITE "Yes, I'll mad him," retorted the cook, "if he comes meddling with my larder when my back's turned. I have a very great mind not to finish cooking those sausage-meat cakes for his tea--behaving like that when the Squire's out!" But all the same Martha Gusset, who was a pleasant, portly dame, went back to her fire to continue her hurried cooking for her young master's evening meal. Meanwhile, without a thought of eating or drinking, Waller was still marching up and down the dining-room making up his mind what he should do; and, this made up, he waited impatiently for the maid's return to finish her preparations, which were concluded by her bearing in a covered dish which evidently contained something hot and steaming, the vapour which escaped from beneath the cover having a very pleasant, savoury odour. "There, Master Waller," said the girl good-humouredly. "Now, do make a good tea, there's a good boy, and you know what cook is; she don't like to be put out. I know what I should do if I was you." "What?" said Waller, rather surlily. "Go into the kitchen as soon as you have done tea, and tell her that you never had anything nicer than those cakes; and she will be so pleased that she won't say another word about the pie." "Oh, very well," said Waller, who was making another plan. "That's a good boy. Between you and me. Master Waller, Martha's as nice as nice, but she's just as proud and stuck up about her cooking as her brother is about being constable. Ring when you have done, please." Waller nodded, and lifted up the dish-cover, which the girl took from his hand, and then, nodding pleasantly, hurried out of the room. The boy's actions the next minute were rather curious, for he followed to the door, turned the little handle that shot the small bolt into its socket, and then, after a conspirator-like glance at both the windows, he went to the bookcase and took down six or eight books from the lower shelf, to place them on a chair, before he hurried back to the table, caught up a nice hot plate and a fork, and then transferred half a dozen out of the eight nicely browned meat buns from the dish, carried the plate to the opening in the bookshelf, and pushed it as far back as it would go. Returning to the table, he paid his next attentions to a little pile of hot and buttered bread cakes, a kind of food in which Martha excelled. Taking up a couple of these, one in each hand, he was moving once more towards the bookcase, but turned back directly. "Sure to be dusty in there," he muttered; and, turning back to the table, he deposited the cakes in a plate, which the next minute was standing beside its fellow in the back of the bookcase. The boy's next act was to replace the books; but there was not room for them and the plates, and the consequence was that they projected about a couple of inches from the edge of the shelf, while when he tried to shut the glass bookcase door, it too, stood a little way out. "Don't suppose she will see," he muttered, and, satisfied now with what he had done, he went and unbolted the dining-room door, and, feeling very guilty, took his place at the table, poured out his tea, was very liberal with the sugar and milk, and then helped himself to one of the two sausage cakes left and a slice of hot bread. He had got about half-way through Martha's appetising cake and had taken three good half-moon bites out of a slice of hot bread, thinking deeply the while, and munching mechanically with his mouth full, but quite unconscious of the flavour of that which he ate, when the door was thrown open and Bella entered, making the boy jump and feel more guilty than ever. "It's only me, Master Waller. I have just come to see how you are getting on," continued the girl, as she advanced towards the table, scanning everything that it held, "and whether I can--oh, my!" she burst out, snatching up her apron and holding it to her mouth to try and stifle back an immoderate burst of laughter. The next moment she had rushed out of the room, this time allowing the door to bang behind her, while Waller jumped up, staring hard at the partly closed bookcase door as if to read there the cause of the girl's quick exit. "She must have been watching at the keyhole," he muttered to himself, for a guilty conscience needs no accuser, "and she's gone to tell cook." But it was something quite different that Bella was telling her fellow-servant, after throwing herself down in one of the kitchen chairs and laughing hysterically till she cried and choked. "Oh, don't be such a stupid," grunted plump Martha, standing over her and thumping her back. "What is it you have seen? Don't keep it all to yourself. What are you laughing at? You will have a fit directly." "Oh! oh! oh-h-oh!" sobbed Bella. "Do leave off, cook. You _hurt_." "Then tell me what you are laughing at." "He's--he's--he's--oh, dear!--oh, dear! I never saw such a sight in my life! I hadn't been gone more than five minutes when--ho! ho! ho! ho!" "Look here," cried cook, who was enjoying her fellow-servant's mirth, and who began thumping again at poor Bella's back, "do you want me to thump it out of you?" "Oh, no, no, no, no, no! Do a-done, cook!" sobbed out Bella, hysterically and incoherently. "Not more than five minutes, and his mouth so full he couldn't speak, and his eyes staring at me out of his head, and he had gobbled up nearly all the sausage cakes and all the hot bread, and I don't know how many cups of tea he had had, but the one before him was quite full. But oh, Martha, do a-done, and let me laugh it out, or I shall die!" Plump Martha's face was wreathed with smiles, and she chuckled a little audibly at her fellow-servant's mirth, while her pleasant little vanity was agreeably tickled at the appreciation of her culinary efforts all the while. "You are such a stupid, Bella," she said, good-humouredly. "When once you begin to laugh you never know how to leave off. I don't see anything to laugh at. Poor dear boy, he'd had no dinner, and only a morsel of cold pork-pie since breakfast, and he does like my cakes." _ |
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