tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32790991431392965762024-03-12T19:23:22.475-07:00Kate's Virtual KitchenI like easy recipes that don't call for hard-to-find ingredients or lots of prep work. I also like reading old cookbooks and bringing some of the dishes up to date. My recipes don't require you to be a gourmet chef and many of them are simple enough for kids to tackle.Kate Tompkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09710881987151764601noreply@blogger.comBlogger203125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3279099143139296576.post-60321747655885676372024-02-29T10:55:00.000-08:002024-02-29T10:55:47.076-08:00Granola<p>With the price of everything, including breakfast cereal,
sky high these days, I decided to pull out my old recipe for homemade granola.
Making your own is easy, cheaper than store-bought, and you know what’s in it.
Don’t like raisins? Allergic to nuts? No problem. Use your own add-ins. I like
dark chocolate curls and banana chips.</p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">6 cups quick cook oats<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">6 tablespoons brown sugar<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">1 teaspoon salt<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">1 tablespoon cinnamon<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">3 ounces vegetable oil (coconut gives a nice flavour if
you happen to have any on hand)<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">2/3 cup water<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">Add-ins (optional) such as raisins, almonds, dried
pineapple…<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><br /></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing">Combine oatmeal, brown sugar, salt and cinnamon in a
large bowl. Stir in vegetable oil and water. Spread thinly on one or two cookie
sheets (the ones with sides, not the flat ones) and dry in a 225⁰F oven for two
hours. Stir in desired add-ins.</p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><o:p></o:p></p>Kate Tompkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09710881987151764601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3279099143139296576.post-79748314718727643132024-02-24T11:17:00.000-08:002024-02-24T11:17:11.954-08:00Sportsmanlike Conduct<p>The winter I was eight, we must have had a lot of snowstorms
followed by thaws. There was a small paved patch near our house, and that year
it got covered with a layer of ice, turning it into a mini rink. While it was
small, it was much more convenient than going to the official rink a few blocks
away, which was also outdoors. This was especially so since we always had to
walk to the rink wearing our skates (with guards on the blades, of course).</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I was out on the mini rink by myself one morning, skating
slowly around, when I saw a group of boys headed my direction and carrying
hockey sticks. Since the ice wasn’t big enough for them to play on and me to
skate on, I started moving faster, determined to enjoy the last few seconds
before they kicked me off. After all, I was a girl and I was alone. I
understood the laws of the playground.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The boys arrived, and we eyed each other warily. Though they
must have been from the neighborhood, I didn’t know any of them, not surprisingly
since they were a little older than me and we hadn’t been living there that
long.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Finally, one of them spoke. “Do you know how to play
hockey?”</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I shook my head. I barely knew how to skate.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">They looked at each other. Here it comes, I thought. “Okay,
why don’t you play goalie?” he said. And so I did. They marked off a goal at
one end with piles of clothing, and I stood in front of it, while they skated
around and took shots. I even managed to stop a few. I felt pretty good about
it as I walked back to the house.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Looking back, I realized the boys were probably happy to
have someone else in net—that gave them all the chance to try and score goals.
It was still very generous of them to share the ice with me (even though I was
there first). Their willingness to share the game they loved, even with a girl,
has left me with a fond spot for hockey in my heart ever since.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>Kate Tompkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09710881987151764601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3279099143139296576.post-54598156227976773922024-02-19T09:02:00.000-08:002024-02-19T09:02:24.543-08:00Burnt Butter Icing<p>Here’s the icing from the Betty Crocker Picture Cook Book
to go with the <a href="https://www.katesvirtualkitchen.com/2024/02/butterscotch-drop-cookies.html" target="_blank">Butterscotch Drop Cookies</a>. It only makes enough to cover 30 so
you’ll need to do a double batch if you want to ice all of them.</p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing">4 tablespoons butter</p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">1 cup icing sugar<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">½ teaspoon vanilla<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">hot water<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><br /></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing">Melt butter until golden brown. Blend in icing sugar and
vanilla. Stir in 1-2 tablespoons hot water until icing spreads smoothly.</p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><u>Note:</u> Since the cookies are rather craggy, there is no
way the icing is going to spread smoothly. Get it to a good modelling
consistency and, once cool enough to handle, take a small quantity and smoosh
it over the top of each cookie.</p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">I haven’t tried this on anything else yet, but am
thinking it would be good on cake or thinned down to a glaze for doughnuts.</p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><a href="https://www.katesvirtualkitchen.com/2024/02/butterscotch-drop-cookies.html">https://www.katesvirtualkitchen.com/2024/02/butterscotch-drop-cookies.html</a><o:p></o:p></p>Kate Tompkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09710881987151764601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3279099143139296576.post-72850303222589516782024-02-17T10:49:00.000-08:002024-02-19T09:04:04.594-08:00Butterscotch Drop Cookies<p>Here’s the first variant on the <a href="https://www.katesvirtualkitchen.com/2024/02/old-fashioned-sour-cream-drop-cookies.html" target="_blank">Sour Cream Drop Cookie</a>
recipe from my last post. They tell you to just substitute brown sugar for
white and add nuts, but rather than make you go back and look, I’ve typed it
out below.</p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">I’ve been on a quest for a cookie that actually tastes
like butterscotch for years, only to be disappointed every time. Even using
butterscotch pudding mix or butter pecan cake mix didn’t work. So I didn’t
think a simple swap of brown sugar for white would magically produce
butterscotch. It didn’t, though it’s a good cookie, but the icing! That does
taste like butterscotch. I may have to try using brown butter in some of my
cookie recipes to see if that’s the answer I’ve been looking for.</p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><br /></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing">½ cup shortening</p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">1 ½ cups brown sugar<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">2 eggs<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">1 cup sour cream (half a 500 ml tub)<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">1 teaspoon vanilla<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">2 ¾ cups flour<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">½ teaspoon baking soda<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">½ teaspoon baking powder<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">½ teaspoon salt<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">2/3 cup chopped nuts (I used pecans zapped in my coffee
grinder until coarse)<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing">Cream together shortening and sugar. Add eggs. Stir in
sour cream and vanilla.</p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">Sift together flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt.
Stir into shortening mixture. Stir in nuts. Chill at least one hour.</p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">Preheat oven to 425⁰F. Drop by rounded teaspoons
onto lightly greased baking sheet. Bake 8-10 minutes until delicately brown.</p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">Cool. Ice with <a href="https://www.katesvirtualkitchen.com/2024/02/burnt-butter-icing.html" target="_blank">burnt butter icing</a>.</p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">Makes about 5 dozen.</p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><a href="https://www.katesvirtualkitchen.com/2024/02/old-fashioned-sour-cream-drop-cookies.html">https://www.katesvirtualkitchen.com/2024/02/old-fashioned-sour-cream-drop-cookies.html</a><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><a href="https://www.katesvirtualkitchen.com/2024/02/burnt-butter-icing.html">https://www.katesvirtualkitchen.com/2024/02/burnt-butter-icing.html</a><o:p></o:p></p>Kate Tompkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09710881987151764601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3279099143139296576.post-47642716868832512152024-02-15T12:19:00.000-08:002024-02-19T09:06:03.278-08:00Old-Fashioned Sour Cream Drop Cookies<p>Sometime before Christmas, I came across the Betty
Crocker Picture Cooky Book on Project Gutenberg. There were lots of interesting
recipes in it, but my Christmas baking list was finalized, so I had to wait
until everything had been baked AND eaten before trying something new.</p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">This particular recipe is a “key” recipe, a basic recipe
followed by several variations. While it was easy to work with and the cookies came
out light and puffy, they were rather plain. I was a bit disappointed, as the combination
of sour cream and vanilla in the dough made it smell like cheesecake, but the aroma
didn’t survive the oven. However, they’d be easy enough to spice up, either
with one of the given variations or your own add-ins. In fact, I’ve already
tried <a href="https://www.katesvirtualkitchen.com/2024/02/butterscotch-drop-cookies.html" target="_blank">variation two</a>, and it was delicious.</p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">½ cup shortening</p><p class="MsoNoSpacing">1 ½ cups sugar</p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">2 eggs<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">1 cup sour cream* (half a 500 ml tub)<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">1 teaspoon vanilla<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">2 ¾ cups flour<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">½ teaspoon baking soda<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">½ teaspoon baking powder<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">½ teaspoon salt<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><br /></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing">Cream together shortening and sugar. Add eggs. Stir in
sour cream and vanilla.</p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">Sift together flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt.
Stir into shortening mixture. Chill at least one hour.</p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">Preheat oven to 425⁰F. Drop by rounded teaspoons
onto lightly greased baking sheet. Bake 8-10 minutes until delicately brown.</p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">Makes about 5 dozen.</p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">*The recipe called for “thick” sour cream but the 5% I
used worked just fine.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><br /></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><a href="https://www.katesvirtualkitchen.com/2024/02/butterscotch-drop-cookies.html">https://www.katesvirtualkitchen.com/2024/02/butterscotch-drop-cookies.html</a><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><a href="https://www.katesvirtualkitchen.com/2024/02/burnt-butter-icing.html">https://www.katesvirtualkitchen.com/2024/02/burnt-butter-icing.html</a></p>Kate Tompkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09710881987151764601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3279099143139296576.post-24220677026841346342024-02-06T08:55:00.000-08:002024-02-06T08:55:25.013-08:00Product Review: Reese’s Peanut Butter Cookie Dough<p>The last time I put a grocery order in, I noticed they
had Reese’s Peanut Butter Cookie Dough available (it’s in with the other
Pillsbury cookies). I wasn’t really expecting too much, but we needed cookies,
having finally run out of Christmas baking, and I was short on time so figured
they were worth a try.</p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">The package makes two dozen cookies. When I took off the
outer wrap, I found a cardboard tray with 24 little cubes sitting on it. All I
had to do was plunk them on a cookie sheet, squash them down with a fork, and
bake them. Can’t get any easier than that.</p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">They were really good. Better than most “boughten”
cookies. They actually tasted like homemade, and the price and quantity was
comparable to a regular package of cookies. If you need cookies in a hurry,
they’re a good option.</p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">The package also claims you can eat the dough without
actually baking it first, that they’re, “Safe to eat raw.” I didn’t try it, but
given the cooked flavour, I imagine they’d be great.</p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">If you’re (sshhh!) trying to pass these off as your own
baking, you might want to roll the cubes in your hands until they’re round
before placing them on the sheet and flattening them. Otherwise, the cookies
come out looking a little square.</p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><o:p></o:p></p>Kate Tompkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09710881987151764601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3279099143139296576.post-24655591302688319012024-01-03T11:34:00.000-08:002024-01-03T11:34:24.870-08:00Found and Tested: Peppermint Mocha Scones<p> </p>I always like to try at least one new recipe each Christmas. This past year I was looking for breakfast items as I have more than enough cookie recipes already. I came across <a href="https://www.threeolivesbranch.com/peppermint-mocha-scones/" target="_blank">this recipe</a> for Peppermint Mocha Scones. I like peppermint, I like mocha, I like scones. Seemed worth a try.<div><br /></div><div>It actually came out fairly well, though despite similar ingredients and technique, nothing like scones. More like a cake, really, though not overly sweet. Would I make it again? Yes, definitely.</div><div><br /></div><div>First things first. You can actually buy pre-crushed candy canes, and the fact that I had a bag on hand probably gave me a push towards trying this recipe. I bought mine at Yupik, but I don’t think they exist outside of Montreal. I’ve heard they can sometimes be found at Walmart or The Bulk Barn. Anyway, what you need to know is that six crushed candy canes is roughly ¾ cup.</div><div><br /></div><div>The amount of peppermint called for was perfect. Enough, but not overpowering. And the remaining ¼ cup of candy cane dust sprinkled over the top gives it that festive look.</div><div><br /></div><div>I’d probably leave out the optional coffee powder next time. The one I used (an espresso powder), even though I used less, was too strong, masking the cocoa.</div><div><br /></div><div>Rather than patting the dough into a nine-inch pan and then dumping it out on the counter to be cut into wedges, I formed it into a roll, cut it into six slices and baked it in a hamburger bun mould. That gave me rather large servings; we generally cut them half and made them serve two.
</div>Kate Tompkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09710881987151764601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3279099143139296576.post-31991857373986196952023-11-06T08:09:00.002-08:002023-11-06T08:09:41.336-08:00Tales from the Matthewsburg Manse<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTkaZmlLEMQpaRyoKeKADgaeozkTPIA9J5YoWfyfgdovVuh-f5xCbhxpis6akEdydxgJlKHjkCYazxSPqecq9RZ9CG0HTqnPYN3MrzRONHsZVL_xF46o7bVmRyggCxDIVHSvID58VkZXDOBpSOy8fAVg7AbfTTkTnyMbJt-q9UufNsr5P-uTQJxTjZCy1v/s2175/Matthewsburg%20Cover.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2175" data-original-width="1575" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTkaZmlLEMQpaRyoKeKADgaeozkTPIA9J5YoWfyfgdovVuh-f5xCbhxpis6akEdydxgJlKHjkCYazxSPqecq9RZ9CG0HTqnPYN3MrzRONHsZVL_xF46o7bVmRyggCxDIVHSvID58VkZXDOBpSOy8fAVg7AbfTTkTnyMbJt-q9UufNsr5P-uTQJxTjZCy1v/s320/Matthewsburg%20Cover.jpg" width="232" /></a></div><br />They say everyone has at least one book in them, and I’ve just published mine. <a href="https://books2read.com/u/318zov" target="_blank">Tales from the Matthewsburg Manse</a> contains several short stories (some previously published) that collectively make up a novel. It’s currently available as print on demand (which is why it’s listed on Amazon as temporarily out of stock, you actually have to order it) or as an ebook (Kindle and other). If your public library is subscribed to OverDrive, you might be able to request the ebook version there.<div><br /></div><div>Here’s the back cover blurb to give you some idea of what it’s about:
When city girl Viv's husband Mark accepts his first pastoral charge in rural Matthewsburg, she wonders what to expect, and what will be expected of her. This collection of connected fiction stories, some humorous, some suspenseful, some even romantic, explores Viv's new life as she tries to find her place in the community while dealing with local gossip, old rivalries, suspected murder, sabotaged car shows, and more. Who says life in a small town is boring?</div><div><br /></div><div>You can also find <a href="https://www.amazon.ca/Tales-Matthewsburg-Manse-Kate-Tompkins-ebook/dp/B0CM3ZZ6GG/ref=sr_1_1?crid=LADT0S68K2XG&keywords=Tales+from+the+Matthewsburg+Manse&qid=1699282225&s=books&sprefix=tales+from+the+matthewsburg+manse%2Cstripbooks%2C78&sr=1-1" target="_blank">a sample of the first three stories</a> on Amazon/Kindle.</div><div><br /></div><div>If you do read it, I’d appreciate a review either on the site where you bought it or on GoodReads. If you like it, please tell your friends.
</div><div><br /></div><div>Thanks!</div>Kate Tompkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09710881987151764601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3279099143139296576.post-87397998850291053952023-08-04T07:32:00.005-07:002023-08-04T07:32:46.732-07:00Piggy Fries<p>The last time we were in the Fort Myer’s area, we ate
more than once at Wahoo Willie’s Tiki Bar and Grill in Fort Myer’s Beach. One
of the things I enjoyed on their menu was their Loaded Fries, a plate of fries
covered with barbequed pork, barbeque sauce, shredded cheese and green onions.
Basically a Southern version of poutine. It was delicious, but Fort Myer’s is a
long way to go to satisfy a craving, so I came up with my own homemade version.
It can be served as a meal, or as a group appetizer.</p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">While I’m giving quantities below, you can adjust
proportions and add or subtract ingredients to suit yourself.</p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">650 grams straight-cut fries*</p><p class="MsoNoSpacing">255 grams barbequed pulled pork+</p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">2 cups grated cheddar cheese<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">barbeque sauce<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">Grate the cheese. Cook the fries according to the package
directions. While they are cooking, heat up and shred the pulled pork.</p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">Once the fries are cooked, either place them on a large
platter (if you cook them on a large pizza pan, you can use that) or on 2
individual microwavable or ovenproof plates. Drizzle with barbeque sauce. Cover
with pulled pork and drizzle with more barbeque sauce. Top with shredded
cheese. Pop into the microwave or oven for a few seconds to melt the cheese.</p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">Serves 2</p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">* I used McCain Superfries Extra Crispy Straight Cut
because I thought they’d be less likely to get soggy, but given the price
(almost $7) for what was only two servings (I used the whole bag), I’d probably
go with the store brand next time.</p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">+I used Baton Rouge Fully Cooked BBQ Pulled Pork which
came with its own barbeque sauce. I probably would use that again as the
quantity was right and it was tasty.</p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><o:p></o:p></p>Kate Tompkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09710881987151764601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3279099143139296576.post-79399050186572109032023-08-01T12:42:00.003-07:002023-08-01T12:42:32.379-07:00Pineapple Date Bars<p> </p>Another old recipe for you. I found this in Season’s Best Dishes by Mary Lee Taylor. Seems to have been one of those recipe books compiled to push a particular product, in this case Pet milk. Never heard of it? Neither had I, but it seems to have been similar to Carnation.<div><br /></div><div>I was expecting a hard bar from this, but it came out more like a thin, fruit- and nut-studded sponge cake. I doubled the recipe because I don’t own an 8 x 12 inch shallow pan. By doubling, I was able to use an 11 x 17 cookie sheet. I also substituted regular milk for the evaporated as it didn’t seem worth opening a tin for such a small quantity. And I didn’t put in the nuts, as I had none on hand. It still came out.</div><div><br /></div><div>1 cup crushed pineapple, well drained</div><div>1 ½ cups chopped and pitted dates</div><div>2 cups chopped nuts</div><div>1 ½ cups flour</div><div>1 tablespoon baking powder</div><div>4 eggs</div><div>1 cup sugar</div><div>½ cup milk</div><div>2 teaspoons vanilla</div><div><br /></div><div>Preheat oven to 325° F. Grease an 11 x 17 inch cookie sheet.</div><div><br /></div><div>Mix, then let stand, pineapple, dates and nuts.</div><div><br /></div><div>Sift together flour and baking powder.</div><div><br /></div><div>In large bowl, beat egg yolks until very light. Gradually beat in sugar. Stir in milk and vanilla. Add flour, mixing until smooth.</div><div><br /></div><div>Beat egg whites until stiff. Fold in fruit mixture and egg whites to contents of large bowl.</div><div><br /></div><div>Spread into greased cookie sheet. Bake until firm, about 35 minutes.</div><div><br /></div><div>When cool, cut in 1 x 4 inch bars.</div><div><br /></div><div>I haven’t tried it, but if you wanted a thicker cake, you could bake it in a 9 x 13 pan. Baking time would have to be adjusted upwards.
</div>Kate Tompkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09710881987151764601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3279099143139296576.post-13689164472758569292023-07-06T11:33:00.002-07:002023-07-06T11:33:50.489-07:00Microwavable Ham and Egg Breakfast Bowls<p> </p>We used to enjoy the breakfast bowls you could find in the grocery store freezer section. They generally contained egg and potato and some sort of meat and just needed to be popped in the microwave. But they’ve gotten harder to find and more expensive, and sometimes the meat is—well, let’s just say it’s more like TVP than actual sausage. So I started looking for ways to make my own.<div><br /></div><div>I was inspired by the <a href="https://www.lordbyronskitchen.com/egg-and-sausage-breakfast-rolls/" target="_blank">egg and sausage breakfast rolls</a> on Lord Byron’s Kitchen. In fact, there are several excellent recipes on his site. But I had to tweak this and that to make it more to our taste and this ham version is one of the results. And cooking it in the microwave cuts down on the prep time.</div><div><br /></div><div>While you can certainly use store-bought rolls (6 small submarine style or Kaisers would work well), I generally use this recipe for <a href="https://dinnerthendessert.com/crusty-french-bread-rolls/" target="_blank">crusty French bread rolls</a> and make it into 8 round rolls in a 9 x 13 pan. The torn-out interiors can then be used for making bread pudding.</div><div><br /></div><div>6 or 8 crusty rolls</div><div>156 gram (5.5 ounces) tin of flaked ham</div><div>4 eggs</div><div>¼ cup milk</div><div>grated cheese for topping</div><div><br /></div><div>Take off the top crust of each roll and hollow them out, leaving a good half inch of bread around the outside. I find it easiest to do this with a pair of kitchen scissors. Cut around the outer edge first, then cut underneath if the crust won’t just pull off. Use the scissors again to cut into the roll before tearing out the interior. Be careful. You don’t want holes where the egg mixture will run out. If you do make one, try patching with bread squished together.</div><div><br /></div><div>Fill the bottom half of the rolls with the ham, pushing it into the corners.</div><div><br /></div><div>Beat eggs and milk together and pour over the ham. Don’t overfill. Allow to sit a few minutes, then add more egg mixture if necessary.</div><div><br /></div><div>Place 2 or 3 at a time on a microwavable plate and cover. In my microwave, 3 take 5 minutes on high to cook the egg, and 2 take 4 minutes.</div><div><br /></div><div>Remove from microwave and cover with grated cheese.</div><div><br /></div><div>They can be eaten as soon as the cheese melts, or you can let them cool and freeze them for later. Let thaw overnight in the refrigerator and zap in the microwave to remelt cheese before serving.
</div>Kate Tompkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09710881987151764601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3279099143139296576.post-36402876954808955602023-06-27T08:29:00.005-07:002023-06-27T08:29:40.678-07:00Calorie-Free Citrus Iced Tea<p> </p>This does have to be made ahead so the tea has time to cool down before serving, but the prep time is basically however long it takes the kettle to boil. If you’re worried about the use of artificial sweeteners, use one can of frozen orange drink or lemonade instead and as much boiling water as it takes to fill the pitcher. Of course, there will be calories with that variant.<div><br /></div><div>4 tea bags (I’ve only tried it with orange pekoe)</div><div>8 cups boiling water</div><div>4 squirts lemonade-flavoured liquid water enhancer</div><div>2 squirts orange-flavoured liquid water enhancer</div><div><br /></div><div>Place tea bags in bottom of two-quart pitcher. Fill up with boiling water. Let sit 10 minutes, then remove tea bags (a slotted serving spoon works well for this). I usually let it cool down on the counter before putting it in the fridge.
Serve cold over ice.
</div>Kate Tompkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09710881987151764601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3279099143139296576.post-43328227304798742832023-06-21T12:23:00.001-07:002023-06-21T12:23:21.884-07:00Iced Mocha Coffee in Bulk<p> </p>I like to have a pitcher of this on hand in the summertime. I generally use decaf coffee so I can enjoy it in the late afternoon without worrying about trouble sleeping at night.<div><br /></div><div>4 tablespoons instant espresso</div><div>3 tablespoons sugar</div><div>3 tablespoons cocoa</div><div>7 cups boiling water</div><div>1 cup coffee cream (10%)</div><div><br /></div><div>In a 2-quart pitcher, combine espresso, sugar and cocoa. Whisk together with 2 cups of boiling water. Add the coffee cream and the rest of the boiling water, stirring as you go. Let cool and refrigerate. Serve over ice, stirring first as the cocoa tends to settle out.</div><div><br /></div><div>Makes 8 cups/2 quarts</div><div><br /></div><div>While I’ve used instant coffee to make this, of course you can make it with regular coffee instead of the powder and boiling water. Just make it up a bit on the strong side.</div><div><br /></div><div>You get a richer flavour if you use 5 tablespoons of espresso, sugar and cocoa, but you’ll end up with a lot of sludge in the bottom of the pitcher no matter how much you stir it.
</div>Kate Tompkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09710881987151764601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3279099143139296576.post-56829744369665391302023-06-03T09:02:00.002-07:002023-06-03T09:02:18.985-07:00Lazy Woman’s Maple Sugar Pie<p> </p>While I was binge-watching the Old Cookbook Show a few weeks back, I came across the episode where they were making <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmPhGR9touE">maple sugar pie</a> from the 1915 edition of the Toronto Queen City of Canada Cookbook. That sounded like something I’d want to try, if I could get my hands on some maple sugar. And a couple of days later, there it was, on the shelf at my local grocery store.<div><br /></div><div>So why am I blogging about it here when it’s already available online elsewhere? Because I did make a few changes in the technique and the ingredients <span style="color: #2b00fe;">(in blue)</span>, hence the title. And also because it came out really, really tasty.</div><div><br /></div><div>2 cups milk <span style="color: #2b00fe;">(I used one cup of 10% cream and one cup of water instead, figuring 1915 milk probably had a higher fat content than the 1% in my fridge)</span></div><div>1 cup maple sugar</div><div>2 rounded teaspoons cornstarch</div><div>2 eggs <span style="color: #2b00fe;">(I only used the egg yolks)</span></div><div>¼ cup icing sugar <span style="color: #2b00fe;">(didn’t use since I wasn't making meringue)</span></div><div>paste-lined plate <span style="color: #2b00fe;">(1 9-inch graham cracker crust)</span></div><div><span style="color: #2b00fe;">whipping cream for topping</span></div><div><br /></div><div><u>Original Instructions:</u></div><div><br /></div><div>Heat one and one-half cups of milk in a double boiler and add one cup of maple sugar broken fine or grated.</div><div><br /></div><div>Bring to the boiling point, add two rounding teaspoons cornstarch mixed, with one-half cup milk and cook eight minutes.</div><div><br /></div><div>Pour a little over the yolks of two eggs and stir and return to boiler and cook until smooth.</div><div><br /></div><div>Pour into a paste-lined plate and bake.</div><div><br /></div><div>Cover with meringue made of the whites of two eggs beaten stiff with one-quarter cup powdered sugar and brown.</div><div><br /></div><div>Like so many of these old recipes, no directions are given about oven temperature, such as slow oven, hot oven, or how long to cook. I looked at other custard pie recipes to figure that out.</div><div><br /></div><div><span style="color: #2b00fe;">My Instructions:</span></div><div><br /></div><div>I started out following the recipe, but it was taking forever for the cream/maple sugar mixture to reach boiling point in my makeshift double boiler (a glass bowl over a saucepan). I got impatient and I said to myself, “This is just a custard, and I know you can make custard in the microwave.” So here’s my version of making the filling.</div><div><br /></div><div>Preheat oven to 300°F.</div><div><br /></div><div>In a small bowl, combine the maple sugar and the cornstarch. Stir in the two egg yolks. Add enough of the water/cream mixture to make a thin paste.</div><div><br /></div><div>In a large microwavable container (a large glass measuring cup is perfect for this), heat the rest of the water/cream mixture until it boils. Whisk in the paste. Continuing microwaving in 30-second bursts and whisking until the mixture thickens.</div><div><br /></div><div>Pour into pie crust. Bake for 35 to 40 minutes.</div><div><br /></div><div>At this point, if you’re following the original recipe, you’ll want to make the meringue. I opted to serve my cooled pie with whipped cream instead, and I think it was a better choice. It was certainly easier.</div>Kate Tompkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09710881987151764601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3279099143139296576.post-52691130864281708072023-05-30T13:29:00.000-07:002023-05-30T13:29:04.251-07:00Adventures in Cookieing, Part Three: Icing Consistency<p> </p>Now that you’re happy with your cookie rolling and cutting skills, it’s time to move on to the next step, applying the base coat. While you can paint or stencil directly onto a plain cookie (I’ve tried it), the colours show up much better against bright white, which means some variant of royal icing. This should not be applied on cookies fresh from the oven as it will just run everywhere. Give the cookies time to not only cool but dry out a bit.<div><br /></div><div>There are plenty of icing recipes out there, and it’s even possible to buy mixes that just require the addition of water, but for household consumption you can easily make your own, no expensive stand mixer required.</div><div><br /></div><div><u>Cookie Icing</u></div><div><br /></div><div>1 cup icing sugar</div><div>1 tablespoon meringue powder (my grocery store carries it in the cake mix aisle)</div><div>food colouring (if you want a base other than white)</div><div>flavouring (optional)</div><div>water</div><div><br /></div><div>In a small bowl, stir together the icing sugar and meringue powder. Add colouring and flavouring (1/4 teaspoon of vanilla or almond is nice) if desired. Then add water a few drops at a time until the desired consistency is reached.</div><div><br /></div><div>That’s the tricky bit. You want icing that’s thick enough to stand on its own (it will be forming a dam) and thin enough to be piped. There are lots of videos online and everyone seems to have their own idea of what the right consistency is. Most say that the icing needs to be thick enough that a line drawn through it with a knife will stay there for several seconds, but I’ve seen several versions of just how many seconds that is. You’ll need to experiment. And remember, if they don’t come out looking right, you can always eat the evidence. It took me a few batches to get the technique down.</div><div><br /></div><div>Add more icing sugar if it’s too thin or more water if it’s too thick, but be careful. On my second attempt, the icing came out perfectly for the first cookie but I couldn’t squeeze any more out. So I added a few drops of water directly into the piping bag. My next squeeze sent icing out the top of the bag and all over the cupboard rather than through the tip. Speaking of which, a small round tip which will allow you to “draw” a straight line is all that’s needed. You can buy disposable piping bags, but I prefer silicone bags, which are fairly easy to clean up and can be reused multiple times.</div><div><br /></div><div>Pipe a line of icing around the outer edge of the cookie. Let that stand a while to harden and then fill in the interior with more icing (that’s called flooding). You can either use the icing you’ve already got made up as is, or thin it a little bit first. Either way, something pointed, such as a skewer, is useful for pushing icing into the unfilled corners, popping bubbles, or generally smoothing things out. You want enough icing to hide the surface of the cookie and come to the top of the outline (you’re aiming at a flat surface) but not so much that it won’t dry in a reasonable length of time.</div><div><br /></div><div>Set your iced cookies aside for several hours or overnight and you’re ready to stencil or paint.
</div>Kate Tompkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09710881987151764601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3279099143139296576.post-59575735146916729142023-05-16T08:01:00.000-07:002023-05-16T08:01:24.523-07:00Paragon Pudding<p>I found this one in The Ideal Cookery Book, Third Edition, available on Project Gutenberg, and was intrigued by the fact that it used potatoes to make a dessert. The ingredients weren’t expensive so I figured I had nothing to lose by trying. It actually came out pretty well, though it took much longer to make than expected as we had a three-day power outage due to an ice storm in the middle of the process. Looks like a good way to use up leftover mashed potatoes.</p><p><br /></p><p>1 pound peeled and cooked potatoes (measured before cooking)</p><p>¼ cup butter, melted</p><p>rind and juice of 2 lemons (or 4 tablespoons bottled lemon juice)</p><p>5 oz sugar</p><p>2 eggs</p><p>pinch salt</p><p>½ teaspoon vanilla*</p><p><br /></p><p>Rub potatoes through a sieve. Add butter, then grated rind, sugar, eggs, lemon juice and vanilla.</p><p>Spoon into a greased 9-inch pie plate. Bake at 350°F for 30 minutes.</p><p><br /></p><p>I served this with an amaretto-flavoured hard sauce because I was afraid it would be bland. It actually wasn’t, but the hard sauce did work well with it. You could also use whipped cream to dress it up a bit.</p><p>* not called for in the recipe but I put it in anyway</p>Kate Tompkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09710881987151764601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3279099143139296576.post-90655950387574937722023-05-10T13:45:00.001-07:002023-05-10T13:45:07.268-07:00A Modern Trio in an Old Town, by Katharine Haviland Taylor<p>I really enjoyed this novel and thought others might too. If you’re into writing, it’s a clinic on character voice and show don’t tell. If you’re not, it’s still an engaging story with likeable characters, told with humour. And I guarantee it's clean.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">What happens when 18-year-old Jane
Jones leaves her small town in Pennsylvania to travel to Florence to study with
a master piano teacher?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Project Gutenberg information can be
found at the end of the final chapter or online at www.gutenberg.org</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">NEW YORK</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY HARCOURT, BRACE AND
COMPANY, INC.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">CHAPTER ONE - APPREHENSIONS</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">As I look back through my experience of
eighteen years, I realize that many of my apprehensions have been foolish,
because so many of the things that I dreaded turned out all right. Almost every
one of the parties I thought would be stiff - and I am not very happy at the sort!
- proved to be the kind where everyone grew lively. I remember one that Elaine
McDonald had, particularly, because I had said to mother, “I don’t want to go.
They’ll all wear gloves and it will be miserable!” But I did go, and they had a
Paul Jones that was so rough that they broke a chair and knocked over a table,
and it was fine!</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">While, on the other hand, there have been
parties that I thought would be nice and informal, and we just went and sat in
one place and talked, and at that sort I smile until my face feels as if it
were covered with shellac, because I don’t feel like smiling at all.</span></p><p>
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And this all shows - or it should,
because I am trying to make it - that I never should take my apprehensions
seriously. But I seem to have to, and I always do, and so I felt as if I had
real reason for misery, when Mrs. Hamilton, who had looked after me as I
crossed the Atlantic upon the Steamship Carpatia, called me back into the
stateroom and said, “By the way, child, I am not going to Florence, after all.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Well, I shifted my weight from one foot
to the other, which is what I often do while waiting.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“But,” she went on, as she fussed with the
little jars that contribute quite a lot toward her beauty, “I shall hunt up
someone who is, and see that you are looked after.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Thank you,” I said, and then I went
back to the foot I had originally been standing on.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“My friends, the Wiltons, want me to go
to Mentone with them,” she stated as she picked up a little brush she has for
her eyebrows and began to use it, “and their plans sound rather jolly, and so
I’ve taken them up. I’m really sorry not to see you entirely settled, but
there’ll be someone on board who is going up, no doubt.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“I suppose so,” I answered in a flat tone
that I use while miserable. Then I wondered what in the world would happen if
there was no one on board who was headed for Florence, because the only Italian
I knew was, “La luna bella,” which is “The beautiful moon,” and I didn’t see
what that would do on a railroad train, and especially since I was going to travel
by day.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“How do you say Florence in Italian?” I
asked, after I changed feet again.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Firenze,” Mrs. Hamilton responded, as
she powdered the back of her hands, “and don’t worry, we’ll surely locate
someone who will care for you.”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">But that only half cheered me, because
I had been but a day out of Boston when I realized that Mrs. Hamilton is like a
lot of people who talk a good deal. She is a good promiser, and she promises so
much that she can’t do a third of all she intends to. Really the only thing she
did do that she had forecast doing, was getting seasick, and she, herself,
didn’t entirely cause that. A couple of days of rough weather helped her.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">However, to go back, I blamed her unjustly
this time, for while I was idling around the deck after dinner, wishing that I
had nothing on my mind to keep me from enjoying the salt tang in the air, and
the pretty phosphorescent, silver lights that gleam in the water where the prow
of the boat cuts it, she came toward me, and said she had found someone who
would help me reach Florence safely.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“A Mr. Terrance Wake,” she said, “probably
you’ve never heard of him, but he is rather noted. Writes on art, all that sort
of thing, and has a perfect love of a villa near Florence. He says he’ll he delighted
to be of any service to you.”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Well, if he’ll just let me follow him,
it’ll be all right,” I answered, and Mrs. Hamilton laughed.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Funny child,” she said, and then, “I
must go in; I was dummy. I’ll present Mr. Wake in the morning.”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal">
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">After that she vanished in one of the
bright-lit doorways from which came the energetic voices of people who were
fondly telling each other that they had played the wrong card, and again I was
alone. I felt better and I could breathe with more ease. Before she came I had
felt as if my lungs were a size too small for my breath. Being anxious always
makes me feel that way. And I walked around the deck I had learned so well, speaking
to people as I passed them, exchanging plans, and promising to send postcards.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I was awake when Mrs. Hamilton came
down to go to bed, which was unusual for me, for insomnia is not one of my
troubles, and I sat up in the berth to talk.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“What’s Mr. Wake like?” I asked, as I
leaned out and looked down.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Fascinating man,” she responded, “but
fearfully indifferent!”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Does he smoke?” I asked, for I had begun
to get anxious again, and I had actually supposed up a bad awake-dream that had
to do with his going off to smoke, and the train being broken up, and my being
left in a strange country with nothing to help me but a remark about the moon.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“I don’t know, Jane,” Mrs. Hamilton
answered, with an easy little laugh. Then she added the “Funny child!” she says
at me so often, and I lay back and stared up at the ceiling again.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“You won’t forget to introduce us, will
you?” I asked, as she switched off the lights.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Ho hum,” she yawned, deeply. “No,
dear, certainly not! Now go to sleep, for you’ll have lots that’s new to see
to-morrow. ’Night.”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Goodnight,” I answered. But I
couldn’t take her advice about sleep, and in the dark I lay wide eyed, and half
unhappy, which is, I suppose, silly to confess. But I had never met a strange
country before; in fact, I had never been anywhere much before, and the whole experience
was almost overpowering. And it was only after quite an hour of wakefulness
that my eyes grew heavy and I began to dream.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">When I woke up it was morning, a
bright, sunny, warm morning, and there were voices outside which called in a
way that was new to me; there were songs in the calls, even when they were
angry. And the ship was still, so I knew that we must be in the harbor at
Genoa.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Because I was green - and still am and
always will be! - I went down to the bathroom, and ran a tub full of water, and
then decided not to bathe, for no one but a mud turtle could have bathed in
that sort of water! It came right out of the harbor! And so I contented myself
with the washbowl instead - the water from that was all right - and then went back
to my stateroom; dressed, closed my steamer trunk and my bag, and hurried in to
breakfast.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I found Mrs. Hamilton finishing hers, and
she pointed out Mr. Wake to me. He sat at the Captain’s table, and there was a
beautiful woman devoting herself in the most unselfish way to talking to him,
and he ate all the time she did it, and only nodded! I felt certain then that my
day would be a silent one! However, that didn’t worry me.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Marvelous man,” Mrs. Hamilton sort of
breathed out in a way she does.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“He certainly can eat oatmeal,” I answered,
because that was the only thing I noticed about him. Mrs. Hamilton laughed - she
does a great deal - and turned to tell a young man with a funny little mustache
what I had said, and he laughed. Then Mrs. Hamilton got up, and hurried off, and
I finished my breakfast.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal">
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">As I left the dining saloon, I heard her
hail me, and I found that she had actually come back to see that I met Mr.
Wake.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Mr. Wake!” she called, as he came
toward us, “here is my little charge.” Then she laughed, but he didn’t laugh.
He didn’t even smile, he just bowed from the waistline in a manner that was
very impressive, and yet chilling.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“And it is Miss Jones, whom I am to
look out for?” he asked, in a sort of bored way.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Jane,” I answered. “I should think you
could call me Jane, because you are so much older than I am.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And then he did laugh.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Bully,” he said, “I will! And look
here, Jane, I say, you won’t talk Art to me, will you? Or quote my books?”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“I didn’t know you wrote any until last
night,” I answered, seriously, and again he laughed. I laughed too, but just to
be sociable, because I didn’t see the joke.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“We’ll have a fine day!” he said in the
kindest and most enthusiastic manner, and I felt that we would too, but neither
of us had any idea of how fine it would be, nor of all the many, many happy
happenings it was to preface!<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://www.katesvirtualkitchen.com/2023/05/chapter-two-end-of-one-journey-and.html">Chapter 2</a></span></p><p class="MsoNormal">
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p>Kate Tompkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09710881987151764601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3279099143139296576.post-3873406356657393742023-05-10T12:51:00.006-07:002023-05-10T12:51:58.707-07:00CHAPTER TWO - THE END OF ONE JOURNEY AND THE START OF ANOTHER A Modern Trio in an Old Town<p>After I had said goodbye to a great many people, and walked down the shaking steps with canvas banisters that the sailors hang on the side of a ship, and stepped into a little tug as three Italians who wore blue uniforms screamed, “Attento! Attento!” I felt as if I were getting close to the end of my journey, and that the surprise pile must be getting low, for I couldn’t imagine that things on land could keep on being so different. But they were, and after I landed, I felt as if the ship life, which had been a real change for me, had been only a mild preface.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The harbor was rough, and getting in
was quite hard, which I liked, and a great many of the women in the tug
screamed and held on to the nearest man, and the Italian sailors called
shrilly, and it was all very nice.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Afraid?” Mr. Wake asked of me. It was
the first time he had spoken since he had thanked heaven that I had only one
bag.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“No,” I answered, “I like it. I kind of
wish it would go over – of course I wouldn’t want anyone hurt, but I would
like to write home about it.”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Stars!” said Mr. Wake.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Which one would you rescue?” I asked
as I looked around.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“None,” he answered shortly.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Then I let conversation die, which is what
I almost always have to do when I can’t think of anything to say. I am not at
all like my older sister Roberta, who is socially versed and can go right on
talking, whether she has anything to talk about or not. Roberta is wonderfully clever,
and talented and polished, and strangers can hardly believe we are sisters. But
to get on, I didn’t mind the silence because I had so much to see.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The town that cuddled against the hills
on the shore was getting closer and closer, and it was so interesting to see
palm trees and such stuff that one associates with greenhouses, around the
Statue of Columbus in a public square down in front of the town.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Like it?” Mr. Wake asked of me, after
quite a long interval of silence.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I nodded.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“The Italian sun makes the shadows black,
doesn’t it?” I questioned, lazily, for the day and the new sights made me feel
half sleepy, “and the houses so white that you squint when you look at them,” I
went on. “Just the look of the sun makes you feel warm.”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Mr. Wake said I was right. “Personally,”
he said, “I think that that warm look makes a good many people think Italy a
warm country. It isn’t. Florence is penetrating during some of the winter
months. Hope you have heavy enough clothes.”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Oh, yes,” I answered, “I have long
underwear and everything,” and then I realized how Roberta would have felt
about my confiding that, and grew silent. And after Mr. Wake said, “That’s
good,” in a rather restrained way, he grew silent too.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Then suddenly we were bumping against a
wharf, and the sailors were squawking as if the landing were the first one they
had ever made, and ragged small boys with piercing brown eyes and dusky cheeks
and black hair were crying, “Lady, postcard! Buy the postcard!” and beggars held
out their hands and whined. And it seemed a pity to me that so gentle a climate
and pretty a country had to welcome people that way.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">However, before I was on land two or
three minutes I had forgotten all about it and was completely absorbed by what
Roberta would have termed “The country’s entire charm.”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal">
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">There were occasional palm trees that rose
in piercing spikes between the roofs of dull red tile, and a blue sky so clear
that it seemed thousands of miles from the earth and as if the blue overlaid
silver; and little streets so narrow one felt sure the sun could never creep into
them. But I can’t do justice to these things, I can only tell, and roughly, of
what sank into my mind and stayed there. And the things that dented my memory
enough to stick in it, made their dents by sharp, new edges.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">For instance: in Pennsylvania I never
saw a little curly-haired, brown-skinned baby who looked as if she ought to
have wings, sitting on a curb - without as much as a safety pin on her - and
laughing at the bright pomegranate which she tossed in the air or rolled in the
dirt-filled gutter.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And I had never seen half-clothed little
boys turn handsprings in the street, and then sing out their begging song,
which was, “Uno soldo, Signor! Uno soldo!” nor had I seen a town that lives in
the street, and eats, quarrels, talks and sometimes even sleeps there.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">We had to hurry through Genoa to the
station, because we hadn’t any too much time in which to catch the train for
Florence, but we went on foot and followed our facchino (which is Italian for
porter) who had our bags piled high in a wheelbarrow, and I was glad we walked
and that we were in a hurry, for we took the short cuts through the tiny back streets,
and I think back streets are just like people’s kitchens. You learn more of the
people after you have looked at the dishcloth, and found out whether they use
a nice, hemmed square, or use any old piece of worn material that happens to be
around, than you can from studying their parlors where everything is all spick
and span and stuck up.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I said so to Mr. Wake as we hurried along,
but he didn’t answer. He couldn’t. Our going was uphill, and it seemed to tire
him; he puffed dreadfully. I decided when I knew him better that I would teach
him the Billy Taft stationary run, and a few of Mr. Camp’s “Daily Dozen,” but I
didn’t speak of it then, because I felt that the thought of further exercise
might not be entirely welcome.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal">
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Have to run for it,” he panted, as we
gained the platform, and we did, and we got in the train none too soon. I love
getting trains that way, but Mr. Wake didn’t seem to care for it so much,
because after he had tossed the facchino some coins, and put our bags up on the
shelf that is over the seats, he dropped down opposite me, took off his hat, fanned
himself with it, and then wiped the perspiration from his brow.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Getting old,” he said, but I shook my
head, because my father is a doctor and I knew why he was out of breath.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“You’re just a little overweight,” I said,
and I couldn’t help looking at his stomach which stuck out. He saw me do it and
he laughed and I liked the little wrinkles that stood out boldly for that
moment, around his eyes.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“You know,” he confided, “I’ve been trying
to gain the courage to do something about it, but everyone - up to this moment
- has discouraged me! I’d get my mouth set for long walks and short rations,
and then someone would say, ‘Oh, stuff, you’re just right.’”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Did they really?” I questioned,
because I could hardly believe it, and again he laughed.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Really, Jane!” he answered.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Well,” I commented, “although you are
not really fat, you’re too fat for your height. And you puffed like the dickens
after that run, and it wasn’t anything.” And then I broke off with, “What’s
that?” for a horn of the prettiest, clear tone had tooted, and it made me
wonder.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Horn,” said Mr. Wake, “they do that in
the stations before the trains pull out; haven’t any bells over here, you know.
Now watch this start - smooth as glass; no jolts! Government over here seems to
know how to run railroads.”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I smiled, because I thought that any government
should be able to run the funny little trains that looked as if they ought to
be running around a Christmas tree, and as if they would fall off at every
curve, to lie, feet up, buzzing until someone started them on again.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Mr. Wake saw my smile, and I was glad he
did, because what it led him to say helped me lots later.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Think they’re funny?” he asked.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“They look as if they ought to be full
of pine needles,” I answered. “You know how the needles begin to drop all over
the Christmas tree yard about the second of January?”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Of course they look like that,” he answered,
“we got our patterns for toys, with many another thing, from this side of the
pond. My child, a great many Americans come over here, and derive real benefit;
they see things that are beautiful and rare, but their gratitude is of a
strange variety, for they evidence it only with bragging.”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I felt flat. I said so.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Pshaw, don’t!” Mr. Wake begged. “I didn’t
mean you and I don’t mean to be a preachy old codger, but I do think one sees
more if one appreciates and doesn’t depreciate. You know, as a matter of fact
you wouldn’t go into a neighbor’s house and say, ‘My house is better than your
house, my bathtub is shinier; my doorbell is louder, my front porch is wider,’
and lots of us - in various ways - do just that, for this is a neighbor’s
house.”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal">
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I said a really humble “Thank you,” and
Mr. Wake moved over to sit by me. He looked down and smiled in a very gentle
way, and I began to love him.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“You are a very nice, sensible little
girl,” he said; “how old are you!”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I told him.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“And why are you off here alone at
eighteen?” he asked.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“I am going to Florence to study piano
with Mr. Michele Paggi,” I responded.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Well, well!” said Mr. Wake. And then
he laughed. “I know him,” he said after the laugh. “And my, my, what a
fire-eater he is! Well, you seem to like adventure. But whatever started you
this way?”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“It really is a fairy story,” I said,
“and it is so romantic that I sometimes can’t quite believe it, and I know I
never shall be sure it isn’t all a dream.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“That is nice,” Mr. Wake broke in, “and
it’s hard to believe that I sit by a young lady who instead of asking questions
will weave me a tale. Good fairies in it?”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Yes,” I answered, “and a fairy godmother,
who wears Paris hats, and always tilted just a little over one eye, and soft
silk dresses, and gray furs that match her fluffy, wavy, light gray hair.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Ah,” said Mr. Wake, “then she is the
sort that I, myself, might fancy!”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Oh, you would !” I asserted surely;
and it seems very, very funny to recall that now!</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://www.katesvirtualkitchen.com/2023/05/chapter-three-lunch-and-some-modern.html">Chapter 3</a></span></p><p class="MsoNormal">
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p>Kate Tompkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09710881987151764601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3279099143139296576.post-49333328304085227142023-05-10T11:49:00.000-07:002023-05-10T11:49:01.074-07:00CHAPTER THREE - LUNCH AND SOME MODERN HISTORY A Modern Trio in an Old Town<p>I went into reverse for Mr. Wake, because he seemed interested in my own fairy story, but I didn’t begin to tell it until after lunch.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Buying our lunches was the most interesting
kind of a business transaction, and unpacking them was interesting too.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“At the next station,” Mr. Wake said,
“I am going to get two mighty good lunches that come packed in little baskets,
and there will be a little wicker-covered bottle, full of wine, that you can
use for hair tonic or scent after it’s empty.”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And then the train slowed and he leaned
far out of the opened window that was in the door of our compartment.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The station where we found ourselves
after we had come to a gentle stop was much smaller than the one at Genoa, but
it had the same foreign flavor, and a highly charged feeling of imperfectly
suppressed excitement and happiness. I can’t quite explain about this; it
rises, perhaps, from the clear, dazzling sunlight, the masquerade-ball look that
is lent by gay uniforms, and the women who carry trays that are piled high with
small bouquets. But anyway it is there. And this gaiety was strange to me. Of
course at our stations there are always some people who scream such things as,
“Let us know when you get to Aggie’s!” or, “Don’t forget to write!” at each
other, through two panes of thick glass, but they don’t seem entirely happy and
I feel that the majority are entirely sober about traveling, and when I mentioned
my feeling to Mr. Wake, he said they had a right to be.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Mr. Wake called out something in Italian,
and his cry mingled with the shrilly voiced wants of the many Italians who
leaned from the other windows of the train, and a white-aproned man who
trundled a truck that was piled high with little baskets caught the coins that
were flung to him, and handed lunches into the train, and said his “Grazies”
and made his bows.</span></p><p>
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And then he reached us, and Mr. Wake
bought two baskets for two lire each, and we sat down and unpacked them. There
were bologna sandwiches and ripe olives - which I then didn’t care for - and a
slab of Italian cheese which I couldn’t name, a very good hard roll, figs and
grapes, very fresh and delicious, and then there was the little gourd-shaped bottle
with wicker around its feet, and a paper napkin. It seemed very reasonable to
me for a few cents, because it was all I needed, and I always need quite a bit.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“I don’t know whether I’d better drink
this,” I said, about the wine. “It might make me light-headed.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Nonsense,” said Mr. Wake, “it’s about as
likely to as lemonade. The Italians drink it like water, and you never see one
drunk – probably won’t unless some fool starts a prohibition movement.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Then the train made its slippery, oiled
start, and I spoke only once again, and then I was silent for some time. “Do
they sell cushions, too?” I asked. I had seen a whole truck piled high with
them, and had seen some of them being passed into the windows of the train, and
I was naturally curious about everything.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Rent them,” Mr. Wake answered. “The
people leave them in the train, and they are rented again on the trip back.”
That seemed very strange to me, too, coming, as I do, from a race that takes
everything that isn’t nailed down, while traveling.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Then I really ate, and I was glad to
have the quiet lull in which to look at the things we passed. Everything
fascinated me, but nothing seemed real. I expected all the time to hear the
click of the nickel as it drops into one of those boxes holding candy that are
clamped to the back of the seats in our opera house. The country looked like a drop
curtain, or the kind of a scene that brings on a Tyrolean chorus. There was a
lot of pink and white and bright, bright green and salmon-colored houses, with
blue shutters; and little shrines set high upon their walls, under the
wide-hanging, gleaming roofs of tiles. And there were oxen on the smooth white
roads we passed, drawing queer, lumbering-looking carts with huge wheels that
creaked each time they completed their uneven circles. I had so many things to
interest me that I was too busy. It made me think of the time that Daddy took the
twins (my youngest sisters) to the circus, and they cried because they couldn’t
look at all the rings at once. I felt that way, and so surprised over
everything. I enjoyed my lunch, but I chewed dully and without my usual
enthusiasm. That was because I was looking so hard at the same time. Mr. Wake
watched me, and his eyes twinkled. I think he liked the way I felt. Anyway, as
I brushed the crumbs from my lap and put the little basket in which the lunch
had come up by my bag, Mr. Wake said, “You know, I have a firm conviction that
you are going to enjoy Florence.”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“I’d be an idiot not to, wouldn’t I?” I
asked.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Surely, but the world is full of idiots.
Mr. Carlyle once said, ‘London has a population of three million people, most
of whom are fools’ - but tell me your story. You come from Pennsylvania?”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Yes,” I answered, “from a little town
that has the smell of oil in the air, and that is surrounded by hills that have
oil wells on them. It’s a fine town. You’d like it.”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“No doubt,” agreed Mr. Wake, and again
he smiled at me.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal">
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“And,” I confided, “I’d never even been
to Buffalo, which is our closest city, so you can imagine what all this does to
me.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“And who waved the wand?” he asked.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Miss Sheila Parrish,” I answered.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Miss—,” he stopped, then began again,
“Miss who?” he asked.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Miss Sheila Parrish,” I repeated.
“It’s a pretty name, isn’t it?”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Mr. Wake didn’t answer immediately, and
then he said, “It is a pretty name; I’m thinking it holds a touch of old
Ireland and a deal of romance.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“She hasn’t many friends,” I said, “she
says she is fond of solitude.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Mr. Wake, who was looking down at a
strange ring he wore - which I soon learned was a scarab, - twisted it as he
said, “Well, now you have introduced the fairy who holds the wand, tell me,
please, how did she wave it?” And I told him.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> * * *
* *<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It had begun early in May on a rainy
day when I had spilled fudge right in the middle of the front breadth of my one
good dress. I felt dreadfully about it, because Mother is always asking me to
wear an apron, and she works so hard to keep us looking nice that the idea of
making her more work made me miserable. But there the fudge was, spreading over
the floor, with the treacherous pan handle, that had made me knock it off,
looking as mild and blameless as the twins after they have been eating pink and
yellow candy bananas (these are forbidden) and there I stood looking down
miserably at the front of my skirt and wondering what to do.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Well, I remember I murmured, “I might
as well scrape it up, and get out of this,” and so I got a palette knife and
scraped the top layer of fudge off the floor for the twins - who don’t care at
all what has happened to any fudge as long as it happens to come to them - and
then I scraped my dress, and sponged it a little, and then - miserable and feeling
weighted -went up to the third floor where I sleep in the same room with
Roberta, and got into my old, faded pink lawn.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I hated that lawn dress, and it helped
me to wear it while I waited for Mother who was downtown buying Ferris waists
and garter elastic and bone buttons and dish towel material and all those
things mothers buy at least once a month, and of course I needed to see mother
- as every one of us always needs her when we have been into mischief!</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I knew she would say, “Never mind, honey,
we’ll fix it in no time! I have more goods and I’ll slip in a new front breadth
before you can say ‘Jack Robinson!’” And I knew that I would feel humble and
mean because of her being so nice, but cleared up too, and that I would slide
up to her, and lay my face against her shoulder, and say, “Oh, Mother,” in a
tight way, because thinking of how wonderful she is, and how much too good for
us, always makes me want to cry, and I would rather die than cry.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The only time when I ever did cry without
shame was when my favorite pitcher was expelled, and most unjustly, from The
Oil City League.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal">
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">However, to get on, I went downstairs,
and watered the plants and dusted and did all those things I never do while
feeling well mentally, and then I sat down and played the piano.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I didn’t play anything that echoed my
mood but I played a dancing, gay, bright thing. I believe most people save the
sad ones for those moments when they want to feel sentimental, or are not
afraid of being sad.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Anyway I played this thing which
sounded as if gipsies might dance to it in the heart of a summer day, and I
played it, I believe, fairly well.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">After I finished it I sat idle, my
hands on the piano keys, feeling even more depressed than before, and it was
into this moment of dreariness that the fairy godmother stepped.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Perhaps I heard a little noise, and
perhaps I only felt eyes on me, but in any event, I turned - something made me
turn - and then I said, “Why, Miss Sheila!” for although I had never seen the
pretty woman who stood in the doorway, I had often - very often - seen the
picture of the girl she had been, and the years had not changed her much.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">She came toward me as I got up, and she
held out both hands, and I saw that she had felt tears, for her long lashes
were wet, and made into little points.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Bless you, darling child!” she said,
as she kissed me, “how did you know?” and I said, “Mother has a picture of you,
and of course we’ve always talked of you, for Mother loved you so much; she
said you were so kind to her!”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Kind to her?” she echoed, “dear soul,
think of all that she did for me.”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And then her eyes brimmed again, and
Mother spoke quickly of how they had met, because I think she felt that it was
too hard for Miss Sheila to remember the time when Mother, then a trained
nurse, had cared for Miss Sheila’s younger brother who died.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Right by the First National,” Mother
said, “and there I was, coming out of Mr. Duffy’s with a pound of liver, and I
looked up and saw dear Miss Sheila!”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“And I’ve tried to find you everywhere,
Margaret,” said Miss Sheila to Mother, “but that trip - I traveled, you know,
after we parted, and I lost hold of threads for a time, and then when I came
back I couldn’t locate you. I suppose you married the young intern in the
Pennsylvania Hospital, during that interval?”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Mother laughed, flushed and nodded.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“He used to write her letters that
weighed seven to eight pounds, every day,” said Miss Sheila to me, as she shook
her pretty head disapprovingly, “I assure you the poor postman grew quite
stooped; I hope, Jane, that no young intern writes to you?”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And I told her that none did, and that
I wouldn’t let any, because I wanted a husband whom I would know by sight,
anyway, and one that didn’t smell of ether.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And then I put my hand on the piano. “It’s
this with me,” I said shyly, because I do feel shy about my playing. It makes
me feel lumpy in my throat from the way I love it, and that embarrasses me.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal">
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“I don’t wonder,” said Miss Sheila as
she looked at me searchingly, “I heard you. Jane—”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And she didn’t wave her wand, but I saw
the flicker of its silver magic in the air.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Jane,” she continued, “I have a hobby,
and it is helping girls to find work that they like, and after finding it,
helping them to go on with it. This, because I, myself, have been without work,
and suffered from it. You can play, my child, and your mother is going to give
me the great pleasure of letting me help you play better. You are, Margaret? My
dear, remember the old days, and all that you did for me! Jane,” (she turned
back to me) “in Florence there is rather a marvelous teacher named Michele Paggi,
and in October you shall go to him!”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">*</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">*</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">*</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">*</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">*</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">That was the story.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I told it to Mr. Terrance Wake as if he
could see our house, and knew the people in it, including Miss Sheila, who
abandoned the party with whom she was motoring and came to stay with us for a
time.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 45.8pt 91.6pt 137.4pt 183.2pt 229.0pt 274.8pt 320.6pt 366.4pt 412.2pt 458.0pt 503.8pt 549.6pt 595.4pt 641.2pt 687.0pt 732.8pt;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And as I ended it, on that Italian
train that was taking me nearer and nearer to Florence, I looked up to see that
Mr. Wake was still twisting a scarab ring and looking down at it.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 45.8pt 91.6pt 137.4pt 183.2pt 229.0pt 274.8pt 320.6pt 366.4pt 412.2pt 458.0pt 503.8pt 549.6pt 595.4pt 641.2pt 687.0pt 732.8pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“So you see,” I said, “why I am here,
and why I love Miss Sheila.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 45.8pt 91.6pt 137.4pt 183.2pt 229.0pt 274.8pt 320.6pt 366.4pt 412.2pt 458.0pt 503.8pt 549.6pt 595.4pt 641.2pt 687.0pt 732.8pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Yes,” he said, and he raised his head
to smile at me in a strange way. “Yes, I see,” and then he looked away from me
and down again at his scarab ring.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 45.8pt 91.6pt 137.4pt 183.2pt 229.0pt 274.8pt 320.6pt 366.4pt 412.2pt 458.0pt 503.8pt 549.6pt 595.4pt 641.2pt 687.0pt 732.8pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://www.katesvirtualkitchen.com/2023/05/chapter-four-florence-and-new-home.html">Chapter 4</a></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 45.8pt 91.6pt 137.4pt 183.2pt 229.0pt 274.8pt 320.6pt 366.4pt 412.2pt 458.0pt 503.8pt 549.6pt 595.4pt 641.2pt 687.0pt 732.8pt;"><br /></p><br /><p></p>Kate Tompkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09710881987151764601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3279099143139296576.post-36112806541563043442023-05-10T07:22:00.001-07:002023-05-10T07:22:06.556-07:00CHAPTER FOUR - FLORENCE AND THE NEW HOME A Modern Trio in an Old Town<p>When we reached Florence, which was well along in the afternoon, Mr. Wake went with me to the Pension Dante, which is on the Piazza Indipendenza, not far from the station, and is the place where Miss Sheila had arranged to have me stay.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Again a facchino took our baggage and
piled it all up, trunks and bags together, in a wheelbarrow, and then started
ahead of us, singing.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Don’t you live in the country?” I
asked of Mr. Wake, for I had understood from Mrs. Hamilton that he did.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Yes, out the Fiesole way,” he
answered; “my goods go to the Piazza del Duomo where I take a tram.”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“What’s a duomo?” I asked, because I
imagined it was some kind of an officer in a high, bear-skin cap. It seemed to
me that it sounded like that. But it wasn’t, it was something quite different.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“It’s the greatest church in an Italian
city,” Mr. Wake answered, “and I think you will probably be able to see the
dome of this one from your window. It is one of the largest domes in Italy; it
was the model for St. Peter’s in Rome, and it was alike the despair of Michael Angelo,
and the pride of its maker, Brunelleschi.”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I said, “Oh,” because at that time such
facts seemed dry to me, and dulled by dust. I had not learned how much romance
may be unearthed by a puff of breath from someone who knows, as does Mr. Wake,
how to blow aside the years.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“About a month,” he said, “and you’ll
like it, and you’ll be hunting for old facts.” And then he smiled at me in a
way that told me he had understood my feeling.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">After that our facchino paused and
dumped my baggage out of his wheelbarrow and rang a bell.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“You’ve evidently reached home,” Mr.
Wake hazarded, “and a mighty nice place it is too, isn’t it, with this square
before you? Probably puff up a million stairs now, and then you’ll tell me I
have too much tummy, won’t you?”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“No,” I answered, “I did tell you
that.”</span></p><p>
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">He laughed, and we followed the
facchino who had put my trunk on his shoulders, and started before us, up three
flights to the Pension Dante.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Look here,” said Mr. Wake as we paused
on the first landing, “suppose you take me in training? You walk?”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“I have to,” I answered. “Father made
me promise to walk at least five miles every day.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Well, that ought to help me,” Mr. Wake
commented; “suppose I go, too, and show you the town?”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I said I’d like it.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“I can take you to some spots most
tourists miss,” he promised, as we again started on and up.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“That’ll be nice,” I said, but I never
dreamed then how very nice it would be, nor of how much I was to enjoy those
trips he planned, in spite of the fact that I learned a good deal in the
process. “And I thank you,” I ended, and he said I was most welcome.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Then the door at the head of the third
flight opened, and I saw a pretty, plump little Italian woman whose hair
rippled like the waves that follow in the immediate wake of a steamboat, and
when she held out both of her hands to me, and said, “Buona sera, Signorina,
well-come!” I felt very much at home, and I loved her right away.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Are you Miss Rotelli?” I asked.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Yes, Mees Rotelli,” she answered as
she nodded like everything, and I introduced Mr. Wake, and he left me after a
promise of looking around to see how I was in a day or so, and then I followed
Miss Rotelli – I soon called her Miss Julianna – in.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And in.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Well, I think that everybody should
travel. As Mr. Hemmingway, whom I met at dinner, says, it is educational. One
has an idea, or at least I did, that houses all over the world are about the
same. I expected little differences, but I didn’t expect stone floors, or Cupids
painted on walls, or ceilings that took a field glass to see, or to see a
plaster-of-Paris Madonna on the wall with a tall wrought-iron candlestick on
the floor before it. And I hadn’t expected to see a box full of sawdust with a
broom in it, or that they had to clean house differently in Florence. I didn’t
know that there was so little water that they had to dampen sawdust and brush
it around the rooms instead of mopping them up as we do. There are many, many differences,
but those things, and Beata, struck into me at first.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Beata, who had a rose in her hair, and
whom I soon found was the cook and waitress, was sitting in the long corridor
into which I had stepped.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">She rose as I came in and bobbed from
the knees, as Elaine McDonald, who is the only girl in our town who ever went
to boarding school, did the first year after she came home.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“She ees Beata,” said Miss Rotelli, and
Beata spoke. “She say well-come,” explained Miss Rotelli.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Tell her thank you, if you please,” I
said. And then I heard, “Niente, Signorina Americana!” from Beata, who again
sat down and went on knitting a bright red tie.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal">
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“She make for her sweetheart,” said
Miss Rotelli, and I didn’t feel very far from home at that moment. Roberta
makes dozens of ties and always falters over presenting them, and says that
perhaps, after she’s made a few more, she can do better - which mother doesn’t
think very nice, because it makes every poor silly she gives them to think he’s
the first one to have a tie knit for him by Roberta. But Roberta is like that!
It’s all unfair that she should be popular, but she is!</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">However, to get on, I followed Miss
Julianna well down a corridor, which ran straight ahead as one entered the door
from the outside hall, and was so long that it narrowed in the distance almost
like a railroad track, and toward the end of this Miss Julianna opened a door
on the left, and said, “Your room.” She said everything in a clipped way that was
most interesting and, to me, attractive.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And I went in.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I felt lots of interest about that room,
of course, because I imagined that I would spend a great deal of time in it for
the next six months at least. I looked around carefully, and then I said, “It’s
very pretty,” although I really didn’t think it was but I wouldn’t for the world
have disappointed Miss Julianna, who looked on and waited, I thought, a little
anxiously.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Grazie, Signorina,” she said, which
means, “Thank you, Miss,” and after that she said, all in a level, and very
fast, “Down-the-hall-bath-room-with-water-which-runs-and-real-tub-dinner-at-seven-goodbye,”
and after that she nodded her head and backed out.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Then I took an inventory which resulted
in the discovery that I was in a room that was as big as our Elks’ ball-room at
home; a room which was punctuated at long intervals by one bed, covered with a
mustard-colored bedspread, a bureau which had a mirror that belonged in the
funny mirror place in the County Fair, two chairs that were built for people with
stiff corsets, one chair that was designed for an aviator, (it went over
backward if you weren’t familiar with its management) a washstand with some
stuff on it that Leslie - about Leslie later – called “Medieval hardware,” a
table with a bright red cover, a black marble mantel and a footstool which I
soon learned it was wise to use if you didn’t want your feet to grow numb from
cold.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In the exact center of the room was a little
rug that looked about as big as a postage stamp on a cabinet photograph case;
and across from the door was the room’s real attraction which I was yet to
explore, and that was the window.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I walked over to it slowly; and there,
I leaned out, and after I had leaned out I don’t know how long I came back and
hunted in my suitcase for the writing case that Elaine McDonald had got in New
York and given me for a going-away present. And, after I had addressed an envelope
to Mother, and put on “Jackson Ridge, Pennsylvania, Stati Uniti d’America,”
which Miss Sheila had told me to do; and after I had told about my health and
asked about theirs, and said I was safe, and told of Mr. Wake who had helped
me, when Mrs. Hamilton, Miss Sheila’s acquaintance, had changed her plan, I
described the back yard.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“I have just looked out of my window,”
I wrote, “and down into a little court that looks as if it belongs to another
age and were sleeping in this. It is a court upon which all the houses that box
this square, back. It has a fountain in it that has a stone cupid in its
center; there must be a mile-and-a-half of tiny winding paths; and there is
heavy-leaved foliage like none I have ever seen. Some of the trees quite cover
the paths, and others of a more lacy variety give one a glimpse of the red
tiles that divide the winding yellow ways from the green.</span><o:p style="font-family: inherit;"></o:p><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Across the way is a tan stucco house
with green shutters; its next-door neighbor is salmon pink and has flower boxes
on its window sills. The windows are, most of them, set in at different
heights. It does not look neat, but it is pretty; I think even prettier than
the way we do it at home.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“The sun is so bright that when it rests
on anything white, it blinds you. And all the shadows are black. The roofs are
of red tile, and slope gently. There are some poplar trees” (I found later they
were cypress trees; the shape misled me) “swaying over the top of a low roof down
the block. When I was last at the window a little shopkeeper who wore a big
apron sat in his back door singing, while he polished brass, and his voice is
nearly as good as Mr. Kinsolving’s.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(Mr. Kinsolving is our church tenor,
and he gets two dollars for singing at each service, which shows how fine he
is; but I honestly thought that the shopkeeper sung better, but of course I
wasn’t going to write that home for one of the twins to blurt out when they shouldn’t!)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Across the court,” I went on, “is a
studio,” (It seems strange to me now--my writing about that studio in my first letter
home!) “And I can see the artist painting,” my pen scratched on. “He has on a long,
white, aprony-looking thing, and I can see his arm move before his canvas which
is dark. I think I shall like watching him and thinking that there is someone
else in this block who is trying hard to get on, as I shall soon!</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“I wish you could see everything I can,
dear people, and especially the court. Marguerite Clarke, as she was in
Prunella, ought to be dancing in the court with her Pierrot following; the
court looks like that, and as if it would be full of ghosts who dance the
minuet on moonlight nights.”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I stopped, reread what I had written,
and wondered whether I should send it, because Roberta, who is much more
practical, sometimes thinks the things I fancy, silly. But then I caught the
Mrs. Frank Jones on the envelope and I knew that it could go.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">For Mother always understood my funny,
half hidden, soft moods as well as my love of baseball and outdoor things, and
I knew that she would like what I had written, even though it would seem
foolish to all the rest. So I kissed the page, and put a little cross where I
had kissed it, and I wrote, “That’s for you, Mother dear,” and then I got up
and brushed my hair really hard, and hurried around at dressing, the way you do
when you have felt almost homesick and are just a little afraid that the whole
feeling may creep over you.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">An hour or so later I heard a tinkling
bell, and a soft, musically rising voice which sung out, “È pronto!” which I
found later means “Is ready,” in Italian, and that “Is ready” in Italian means
dinner. But I understood that night not from “È pronto,” but from the fact
that, after I opened my door and looked into the hall, I saw three other doors
open and very queer looking people come out of them, and go toddling down the
hall.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The first one was fat, and wore the
kind of basque mother was photographed in when she was very young. Her skirt
was a purplish serge that had once been blue.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal">
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Well, Miss Bannister!” she called to a
thin old lady who came out of the door almost opposite mine. Miss Bannister’s
hair was not applied quite as it should have been; it seems mean to mention it,
but she never gave you a chance to forget it! Leslie thought she tied it on the
gas jet, then ran under it, and clipped the cord as she ran, and let it stay
just where it dropped, and it did look that way!</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Hello,” answered this old lady, in a
high squeaky voice. “Has she come?”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“My eye, yes!” answered the one in the
basque, whose name was Miss Meek, “and a jolly number of boxes too. I say we’ll
have a beastly lot of brag!”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">That made me mad, and I decided that
they wouldn’t have any from me. Then they saw me and grew silent, and at the
moment another door opened, and a tall, thin man who walked as if he had
casters under him, came sliding out.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Ahem,” he said, “ahem! And how is
every one tonight? A charming day,” he went on without waiting for answer, “a
charming day! How well I remember a day such as this in the fall of 1902,” (he
paused, and when he continued, spoke very slowly) “now was it in 1902, or 1903?
How can I fasten it?” (He snapped his fingers and I’m sure he frowned, although
I was walking back of him and couldn’t see.) “But just a moment, I can locate the
year if I reason the thing through, and I make this bold assertion because, if
I recall correctly, it was in the fall of 1902 that I was in England, while the
day to which I refer was beneath Italy’s azure skies, which clearly reveals,
and without possible doubt, that it was in 1903, since—”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Oh, lud!” broke in the fat one who wore
the purplish blue skirt and the basque, and was Miss Meek. “Oh, lud!” which I
found later was her way of saying, “Oh, Lord!”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And then we turned into the dining room
- I had followed the crowd at a respectful distance - and Miss Julianna stepped
forward, to say, “La Signorina Jones, Americana!” and then she turned and said,
“Mees Meek, Mees Banneester, Meester Hemmingway; you must be friend!”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And I said that I hoped they would let
me be. And then, a little flushed because I was not used to meeting so many
people at once, I wiggled into my chair, and Beata came in with the soup.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://www.katesvirtualkitchen.com/2023/05/chapter-five-new-friends-new-day-and.html">Chapter 5</a></span></p><p class="MsoNormal">
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p>Kate Tompkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09710881987151764601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3279099143139296576.post-35039350206327980032023-05-08T05:58:00.000-07:002023-05-08T05:58:07.906-07:00CHAPTER FIVE -NEW FRIENDS, A NEW DAY, AND NEW PLANS A Modern Trio in an Old Town<p>I looked at the bunch of paper roses that stood in the center of the table as I ate my soup, because I felt all the rest looking at me and it made me uncomfortable; and I suppose I would have looked at them, or down at my plate, all through the meal, if Miss Bannister hadn’t barked a question out at me.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Where do you come from?” she asked,
with an emphasis and a rise in her sentence that was as new to me as the
Italian I was hearing.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Pennsylvania,” I answered.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Quite a village, I suppose?” she
questioned.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I tried to explain, but right in the
middle of my explanation she said: “One of my deaf days, but no matter, I don’t
care in the least. I only asked to be polite, don’t you know.”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Which left me feeling as you do when
you run for a car, but do nothing more than reach the spot where it was. I ate
soup quite hard for several minutes.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Then Mr. Hemmingway, who had traveled
quite a lot - I learned it soon! - helped me out by screaming information about
the States across the table to Miss Bannister, who clattered her spoon and kept
saying, “No matter, no matter!” all the time he talked. I felt just exactly as
if I were in the middle of a funny dream, and one that wasn’t especially nice,
and I honestly even half wondered whether I wouldn’t wake up to tell Mother about
it, and have her say, “Now what did you eat before you went to bed?”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">But I didn’t wake up and the dinner went
on; Beata took away our soup plates, and then brought in big plates of
spaghetti, cheese was passed and sprinkled over this, and I found it good, but
difficult to eat, because it was in long pieces. Several on my plate I know
would have gone around our hose reel dozens of times! Anyway, as I struggled with
this and tried to cut it, Mr. Hemmingway began, and I began to understand him.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“I am familiar with the States,” he asserted,
“although my travels in the States have not been extensive. I spent a winter in
Canada while a comparatively young man; it was, if I recall correctly, the
winter of 1882. Or was it ’83? Now I should know. Ah, I have it! It was ’83, and
my certainty of this pertinent fact comes from the recollection that in ’82 I
was in England, and I know this, because the year prior to that, which, if you
will reckon, was ’81, I was detained in a village in South Wales, by a sharp
attack of fever which was thought to have been introduced by the importation of
French labor upon the occasion of…”</span></p><p>
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And so on. He never got there, but I
did feel sorry for him, so I listened just as hard as I could, which is less
trying where you can eat than at other places. He was having a splendid time,
when Miss Meek cut in to question me.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Student?” she boomed out, and she
pronounced it, “Stew-dant.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I felt pleased, and I wanted to answer
nicely, but I had at least six inches of spaghetti in my mouth - I hadn’t meant
to take so much but it kept trailing up, and I had to lap it in - and so I had
to nod. I should have waited a minute before I let that pleased feeling get on top,
because she shoved it right over a cliff by her next remark, which was, “Oh, my
eye!” and she followed that with a prodigious groan. It wasn’t very flattering.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“But in a student pension,” began Mr. Hemmingway,
“where the rates are lowered for others by the fact that practising makes the
house in some ways less attractive, one must accept the handicap with grace.
How well I remember in Vienna, when I, then quite a boy - let me see, what was
the year?”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“No matter!” barked Miss Bannister, and
then Miss Meek added something, after another groan, that interested me
considerably.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“And two more coming!” she stated.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Are there?” I asked quickly.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“I do not lie,” she answered frigidly,
and I stammered out something about not having meant that she did, but that I
was interested.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Mees Leslie Parrish,” said Miss Julianna,
who came in at the moment, after Beata who carried a big platter upon which
were rounds of meat all wrapped in overcoats of cabbage leaves in which they
had been baked, “and Mees Viola Harris-Clarke.”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I was surprised, and I couldn’t quite
believe it, because Leslie Parrish was Miss Sheila’s niece, and I couldn’t see
quite why she was coming to study.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Miss Sheila told me a good deal about
Leslie while she visited us. I remember one day, while I sat on the guest room
bed and helped Miss Sheila run two-toned ribbon - wonderfully lovely ribbon
which was faint lavender on one side and pale peach pink on the other - into
her beautiful underthings, that she, Miss Sheila, said her own niece would have
played well if she had ever learned to work. And I remember just how she looked
as she tossed a chemise to a chair and said, “But unhappily, the child has been
frightfully, and wrongly indulged.”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It made me wonder a lot!</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I knew that Leslie Parrish’s father had
lots of money, all the Parrish family are wealthy, and I knew that she spent
her time going to parties and making visits, and entertaining, for Miss Sheila
had told me that too. So I thought Miss Julianna must be mistaken, because, for
Leslie, the Pension Dante would be very simple.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“When did you hear this?” I asked.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“A week, ten days past,” she answered,
“in the cable. You did not know?”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“No,” I answered, “I didn’t.”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“I suppose you did. Miss Parrish also
write for you.”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“When are they to arrive?” asked Miss
Meek.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal">
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Tomorrow, or day after,” Miss Julianna
answered, as Beata took away the plates that had had the meat on them and
substituted some plates on which were lettuce and red cheese.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">After this came a pastry, and that made
Miss Bannister say, “Tart again!” in a high, querulous voice.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Bally things!” said Miss Meek, who, I
soon found, loved to be thought a sport and used lots of English slang, I
think, because she had been a governess and still taught English to a few
Italians, and was afraid of being considered school-teachery or prim.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">They both ate their tarts just as if
they enjoyed them, while Mr. Hemmingway began to tell about how the first tart
was made in England, and was side-tracked by the reason that had made the man
who had told it to him, tell it to him. I began to see that he was really ever
so funny, and to feel like smiling each time he said, “Now let me see, it was
raining that day if I recall correctly, or was it the day before that day when
it rained so heavily? It seems to me it was that day, because I remember I had
some new galoshes which I had gotten in East London at one of the curb stalls,
and I recall the getting them, because…”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And on and on! His mind was full of little
paths that led him away from the main road, which even a clever person could
only occasionally glimpse through the haze Mr. Hemmingway made by details.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">After we had finished the “tart,” Miss
Meek pushed back her chair, and boomed out “Draughts?” to which Miss Bannister,
who still seemed querulous, answered, “If you like.”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And they got out a checker board from
behind a bookcase that was by a window; Beata cleared one corner of the table,
and they began. Mr. Hemmingway stood looking on, rocking back and forth, first
on his heels and then on his toes, and as he did this he tried, I think, to
tell of a game of checkers he had seen played between experts somewhere in Brazil,
but of course I couldn’t really tell.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“When I was a youngster,” he began,
“now was I twenty-three or was I twenty-four? It seems to me I was twenty-four,
because the year before I had typhus, and I am certain that that happened in my
twenty-third year, and directly after my convalescence I took passage for South
America which would make me twenty-four at that time, since my birthday is in
November, (the year’s saddest month) and having gone directly after that, I
must, therefore, have passed my twenty-fourth birthday.”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Ho hum,” grunted out Miss Meek.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“However, no matter,” said Mr. Hemmingway
quickly, “What I was about to entertain with is the history of my witnessing a
match of draughts played between experts in San Paola. And how keenly I
remember it! The day was fine.”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Ho hum!” groaned Miss Meek.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“What’s he saying?” asked Miss Bannister.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal">
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Not a bally thing! Getting ready,
don’t you know!” Miss Meek shouted in answer, and I did feel sorry for him, but
my sympathy wasn’t needed, for Miss Meek’s attitude, I soon learned, made no
impression.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“I think,” I put in, “I must go to my room;
I am so sorry, for I would love to hear about the match, but I must finish a
letter to my family.” Which wasn’t true, but I didn’t know how to get off
without some excuse!</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I went to bed early, but again I didn’t
sleep early, and I think it was fully a half hour before my eyelids closed. A
cat down in the court had made all the screeching, whining, sizzling, hissing
noises one cat can make, and big mosquitos had hummed around to disturb me,
too. But at last I burrowed under the covers, and then I forgot, and when I woke,
the sun was spread out across the square tiled floor in a wide, blazing streak.
And the sky looked flat, as if some giant had stretched gleaming blue satin all
over space; there wasn’t a cloud, nor a feeling of movement, outside my window,
but only the brightness of the keen, strong sun, and that deep, thick blue. I
lay looking out until someone tapped, and after my answer I heard Beata’s
singing voice, saying: “Buon giorno, Signorina! Acqua calda!”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And I got up to take in a tall, slender-necked
brass pitcher which was filled with water that sent up a cloud of steam.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://www.katesvirtualkitchen.com/2023/05/chapter-six-miss-parrish-and-miss.html">Chapter 6</a></span></span></p>Kate Tompkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09710881987151764601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3279099143139296576.post-78124074402925644332023-05-05T11:41:00.004-07:002023-05-05T11:41:36.012-07:00CHAPTER SIX - MISS PARRISH AND MISS HARRIS-CLARKE A Modern Trio in an Old Town<p>After I had breakfast, I went back to my room, and tried to forget that I was almost hungrier than I had been before, and I did this by looking out into the court, which I found had a morning flavor that differed from its mood of the afternoon. For instance the little man, instead of slowly polishing brass and stopping his polishing now and again as he raised his head and lingered on a particularly nice note in his singing, swept energetically around the back door of his shop with a broom that looked as if it belonged in a picture of some witch. And as he swept he chattered shrilly at a boy who was riveting something on a bench near the door.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And there were children chasing each
other around the paths, and my artist wasn’t at work. I realize now - Leslie
has taught me many things - that it wasn’t nice to spy on him, but at that time
he seemed only part of a play I was witnessing, and when I saw what he was
doing, I hadn’t the slightest consciousness about leaning right out of my window
and looking across at his.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">He was cooking his breakfast, in front of
an open window that was next to the big studio window which so lit the room
that one could see in pretty well, and I did wonder what he was eating! I had
the greatest interest in watching him dump it out of the frying-pan on his
plate, and when he leaned out of his window, to wave his frying-pan, and call, “Gino,
buon giorno!” at the little man with the broom, and he, in turn, waved his
broom as he answered, I felt as if the play was really started.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Then I watched him eat and of course that
wasn’t nice but, as Leslie said, later, I “lack even a rudimentary knowledge of
social graces,” (and I wanted to punch her for saying so) and so I could
frankly enjoy a lot of things a really polished person would have to pretend
they weren’t watching.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">After my artist had had his breakfast
he threw a piece of something that was left at a cat, and said - so loudly that
it floated across the court to me - “Scat, you green-eyed instrument of Satan!”
which led me to think that he had heard the cat concert, too.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“American,” I said half aloud, for two
things had told me so; one was his voice, and the other was his dandy throw,
for it was a peach. It took the cat right on the nose. It must have been soft,
for, after the cat had jumped it came crawling back to the bouquet that had
been hurled at it and sniffed at it as cats do, and then it turned around and
sat down and washed its ears and whiskers. That made me like him, for I like
cats, and a great many men don’t hunt things that are exactly soft to throw at
cats who sing all night!</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Then he went to work. I saw him slip
into his big, long apron, and take his brushes out of a mason jar in which they
were standing, and I left the window and opened my steamer trunk, which I had
only unlocked the night before, and did my unpacking.</span><o:p style="font-family: inherit;"></o:p><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">At about ten Beata came in, pointed at
my made-up bed, and said, “No, no, Signorina!” by which I suppose she meant she
would do it, and then she said, “Oh!” in a way that told me she had suddenly
remembered something, and fumbled in her pocket.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">There was a letter in it for me from
Miss Sheila, and I opened it with a great deal of interest, for I imagined that
it would have something in it about Leslie and this Miss Harris-Clarke, and it
did.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“DEAR CHILD:”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">she wrote, in her funny, curly writing
which I like so much!</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“I am in receipt of rather astounding
news, and news that does not entirely please me, however, it is news that must
be accepted, and perhaps everything that comes of it will be good; I am afraid
I am often a most apprehensive old maiden lady!</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Leslie last night telephoned me that
she intends to spend the winter in Florence and study with Signor Paggi, and
that with her will go a young friend who is - only temporarily, I am afraid - in
Leslie’s complete favor.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“What led to this impulsive plan, I
have only a faint notion, but that makes no difference; it is the work out of
it that bothers me.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Because you will be involved, I shall
have to be more frank about Leslie than I like; and I think I shall do it
through rules.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“You are not to play maid to Leslie;
run ribbons in her clothes, errands for her, or answer her many and various
whims. No doubt this particular interest will last about two or three weeks,
and during that time I insist that you go your own way in complete independence
and remember you are under no obligation to a girl who is - I am sorry to say -
both spoiled and lazy.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Love to you, dear child, and the best
of luck with Signor Paggi; I, I know, am going to live to be even more proud of
you than I am at this moment!</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Always affectionately and devotedly
your friend,</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">“SHEILA PARRISH.”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">and then the date. I thought it was a nice
letter and I read it several times and then I tore it up in tiny pieces and sat
down to answer it, and to assure Miss Sheila, without rapping on wood - and it
never hurts to rap on wood! - that I knew that everything would be all right.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Lunch came right in the middle of my writing,
and after lunch I went to one of the practice rooms, which were way down the
hall, and played for a while. Then I finished my letter, and decided I would go
out and post it, which worried Miss Julianna, whom I met in the hall.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“No,” she said, shaking her head hard,
“You get lost.”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“But the Italians are awfully easy
pointers,” I said - I had learned even then that they wave their hands a lot - “and
as long as they can do that, and I can say ‘Piazza Indipendenza’ and ‘Pension
Dante’ I guess I’ll get along all right; you see how it would work.”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal">
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Yes,” she answered, “maybe, but thees
Meester Wake, he take you soon? I theenk better to take the small walk first, please?”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And because she looked anxious, I said,
“All right,” and smiled at her and then said, “Good-by,” and started down the
stairs.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">These were of stone, and the banisters
made of twisted iron, and the walls were, like most of the other walls, of
painted or frescoed plaster. The hall was cold and draughty as well as dark,
and so quiet that every step I took echoed loudly, and so, when I stepped out
into the warmth and light and noise of the street, the contrast was complete.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I blinked a moment before I started,
and then I drew a deep breath because, well, it made you feel that way!</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">As in Genoa, I don’t remember half I
saw, but I do remember the different things, and the sort of things that I
never could have seen in a Pennsylvania town of fifteen thousand people that is
surrounded by hills with oil wells on them.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The first one that struck in was two
officers who looked as if they had just been painted, and wound up somewhere
between the shoulder blades, although they were much handsomer than any toys
I’d ever seen. One of them had a mustache that tilted up, and he twirled this;
the other flung his wide blue cloak back over his shoulder as he passed me,
with a gesture that looked careless, but couldn’t have been so, because it was
so packed with grace! I walked behind them, looking at their high, shining
boots, and their broad, light blue capes and the gilt braid and the clanking
swords. And I did wonder how they ever could win if they got mixed up in a real
fight, and I knew that they did, for Father had said they were fine and gallant
soldiers.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Then they turned a corner, and I was
ever so sorry until I was diverted by a man who was sprinkling his pavement
with water that he had in a chianti bottle; he wanted the dust kept down in
front of his shop, which was an antique place, but that quart bottle full of
water was all that he dared use!</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">By that time the Park - I mean the
Piazza Indipendenza - was behind me, houses and shops were on the other side
instead of green, and the way was narrow.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">After I walked two blocks on this I saw
a fountain that was on the side of a building opposite, and it was made of blue
and white china, with green leaves and gold oranges and yellow lemons all
around it. I thought it was so wonderful, and for once in my life I thought
right, because even the critics seemed to half enjoy it. I found it was made by
a fellow named della Robbia who had been dead hundreds of years, and that his
work was fairly well known in Italy. Well, I looked at it a while, and then I
remembered my letter, and went up to two old ladies who were sitting on a
doorstep eating some funny little birds that had been cooked with the heads and
feet still on them.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I smiled, stuck out my letter, and
said, “Where?”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And I never heard anything like the outburst
that followed! They both got up and clutched my sleeves, and pointed their
hands that were full of bird-lunch, and nodded their heads and patted my back,
and kept explaining, in forty-seven ways, where the mail box was. It was really
very funny, and I thought I was never going to get away!</span></p><p class="MsoNormal">
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">After I did, and I hadn’t half as much
idea of where the box was as I had when I stopped, I went on, and after a while I
saw something that looked suspicious, and after I saw a woman drop a postcard
in it, I dropped my letter, and then turned.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Going back, I waved at the old ladies,
and said “Grazie,” which I had learned meant thank you, and they bobbed their
heads and called, “Niente, niente, Signorina!”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Then a group of soldiers from the ranks
clattered past me in their olive drab and the heavy shoes that announce their coming,
and again I was at the doorway through which I could reach the Pension Dante, wondering
whether it was really true, or whether my program had slipped to the floor
during the first act?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And then I rang the pension bell and
went in and up.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Going in, and away from all the shrill,
staccato street noises, and the smells, which sometimes aren’t nice, but are
always different, going in and away from all this seemed tame, but after I got
up and Beata had opened the door, I was glad I had been decent enough to
consider Miss Julianna’s feelings because…</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Miss Leslie Parrish, of Oyster Bay,
Long Island, and Miss Viola Harris-Clarke, of Ossining, New York, had arrived!
I heard them before they heard me, which is, perhaps, unfair, but it is
sometimes also a decided advantage, and I needed all the advantages on my side!
I knew it as soon as I heard them speak, and that they would probably consider
me countrified and make fun of me. I didn’t care, but I was glad to get used to
the idea of our being so different, before we met and I was plumped up against
all that manner at one time.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It didn’t take a Signorina Sherlock
Holmes to know that they had come, and I didn’t need Beata’s wild pointing, for
I heard their voices immediately although they were in a room that was well
down the hall.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The first thing I heard was, “Simply
impossible!” (I knew in a second that it was Leslie, and that it was her
comment about the room.) “You mean to say,” she went on, “that my aunt has seen
this?”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Si, Signorina,” Miss Julianna answered,
and she didn’t sound as if she were smiling.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Well,” I heard in Leslie’s pretty,
carefully used voice, “that is very strange! What do you think, Viola?”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“I don’t know, dear,” came in a higher,
and a little more artificial voice, and then there was a silence.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">A short, baffled kind of laugh,
prefaced Leslie’s “I’m absolutely at sea! I don’t know whether to stay or not,
but I vowed I would.”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“We might get a few things,” suggested
Viola.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Yes,” (doubtfully) “but the walls - streaks
and soil - I don’t know!”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Again there was a silence.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal">
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“You do as you like,” said Miss
Julianna quickly and in a rather brittle way. “I have keep the rooms at order
of Mees Parrish, but you do not haf to stay.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And then she came out of the room, and
down the hall toward me. “Insolent!” I heard in Leslie’s voice, and I wasn’t
much impressed.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> <a href="https://www.katesvirtualkitchen.com/2023/05/chapter-seven-getting-acquainted-modern.html">Chapter 7</a></span></p>Kate Tompkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09710881987151764601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3279099143139296576.post-48543776720434542332023-05-05T10:28:00.005-07:002023-05-05T10:28:34.724-07:00CHAPTER SEVEN - GETTING ACQUAINTED A Modern Trio in an Old Town<p>That night, after a dinner during which Leslie and Viola looked as if they were chewing lemons, I went to call on them because I thought it was the polite thing to do. Goodness knows, I didn’t want to! I was afraid that they would purr along about the weather, and that I would have to bob my head and smirk and say, “Yes, isn’t it charmingly warm for this time of year?” and that kind of stuff which certainly bores me! But they didn’t even bother to do that! They talked across me, and, although it wasn’t comfortable, I will admit that it was instructive.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I think one can learn so much about
people when they don’t think it is worthwhile to be polite, or think they are
alone in the bosom of their family.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I remember one time I walked home with
Elaine McDonald from the Crystal Emporium where we had had a banana split, and
her father, who thought she had come in alone, barked down at her as if she
were a member of a section gang and he were the boss.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The thing that made it funny was the
fact that he is a purry man, and always wears a swallow-tail coat on Sunday,
and passes the plate, and stands around after church bobbing and smirking over
people, and saying, “It is a real pleasure to see you here, Mrs. Smith!” (or Mrs.
Jones, or whoever it happened to be) He has a Bible class, too, and is the
President of the Shakespeare Club, and I was surprised to hear him bawl out - bawl
is a crude word, but it does belong here! - “Elaine, you left the fire on under
the boiler and there’s enough hot water here to scald a hog! You and your
mother don’t care how you run the gas and the bills.”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And then Elaine said, and, oh, so sweetly,
“Papa, dear, Jane Jones is with me.”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And he said, “Ahem. How-a-how-a nice,”
and then sneaked back into the bathroom and shut the door quietly and finished
his shaving in deep silence. Which just shows, or should, because I am using it
for the express purpose of illustration, how different people may be in public and
while shaving. Of course Leslie and Viola didn’t syrup up in a hurry as Mr.
McDonald did, because they didn’t consider me worthwhile, but I knew that they
were capable of slapping on a sugar coating if they’d wanted to.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">But, to get on, after dinner I waited
around until half past seven, because the best people in our town never start
out to make calls before that hour, and I wanted to be correct. Then I went
down the hall and tapped on Leslie’s door because I heard a steady buzzing back
of that and it intimated that the newcomers were together and inside. After I
tapped I waited. Then someone slammed a trunk lid, and I heard an impatient,
“What is it?”</span></p><p>
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“It’s me,” I answered, and realized too
late that I shouldn’t have said that. I should have said, “It is I,” but I am
always making mistakes. Then I heard, “Vi, open the door.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And Viola Harris-Clarke let me in.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Leslie, who was leaning over a trunk
fishing things out of it, only looked over her shoulder inquiringly for a
second, and then turned back after a “Hello,” that had a question mark after
it.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“I thought I’d come over and see how
you were getting on,” I said.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Well, sit down,” said Leslie, “that
is, if you can find a place!” And I pushed aside a pile of silk underthings
that was on the end of a lounge, and roosted there. And then I waited to have
Leslie ask how I was, because at home that always comes first. People usually
sit in rocking chairs, and the called on person will say, as they rock, “Well,
now Mrs. Jones, how are you?” And after the caller answers, they get along to
the children and then ask about the father, and next about how the canning is
getting on, or the housecleaning, or the particular activity that belongs to
the season. It is always like that in our town with anyone who calls, which I
consider polite and interested and nice; but I didn’t get it with Leslie;
instead she went right on unpacking.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I looked at her with a good deal of interest,
and I decided that she was the prettiest girl I’d ever seen. Her hair is very
light in shade and texture, and she wears it straight off her forehead, flat at
the sides, and in a psyche knot. (I learned later that Paris is through with
the puffs.) She is tall and thin and graceful, and her skin is fair and it
flushes easily. Her lashes and brows are dark, and her lashes curl up, (a few
days later I saw her help them curl up with a little brush) and she has a
classic profile, slender hands and feet, and a languorous, slow way of looking
at a person that can be either flattering or flattening.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Viola was another story, and just the
way she looked explained every single thing about her.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">You could see that she was a follower.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Her hair had been bobbed, and she had
had to bob it, not because it was becoming to her, but because everyone was
bobbing it. Now she wore it as nearly as Leslie wore hers as she could, with a
net over it, and millions of pins to keep the short ends of the slowly
lengthening hair from flying. Her eyebrows were what she called “Frenched”
which meant that she pulled them out and screeched terribly while doing it, and
her fingernails were too pointed and too shiny. Her mouth was too big, and her
chin receded a little, but she might have been nice looking if she hadn’t made
such a freak of herself. She didn’t look natural at all, and she wasn’t pretty
enough to justify all the fuss that the stupidest person could see she made
over every detail.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">She sat on a corner of the table,
swinging her legs and humming.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Isn’t this simply ghastly?” Leslie
asked of me, after an interval of some minutes’ quiet.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“What?” I asked.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Why, this place. I don’t know what
Aunt Sheila was thinking of!” Then she dumped dozens of pairs of colored silk
stockings out on the floor, and began to take out more and prettier dresses
than I had ever seen before in all my life.</span><o:p style="font-family: inherit;"></o:p><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“How’d your frocks stand the crossing,
dear?” asked Viola lazily.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Oh, fairly. Old rags anyway. I didn’t
get a new thing!” Then she leaned down again and began to take out perhaps a
dozen petticoats that shone in the light, and silk nightdresses and bloomers and
a pink satin corset, and gray suède shoes with cut-steel buckles, and some gold
shoes with straps and ostrich feather rosettes on the ankles, and some dark blue
patent leather shoes with red stitching, and red heels!</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And as she did, she and Viola talked of
people and places I had never met, and of how frightful the dinner had been,
and of the “utterly hideous rooms!”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">After quite a little time of this, although
I suppose it seemed longer to me than it really was, Leslie sagged down on the
corner of a trunk she had not yet opened, and hinted about some past chapters
of her story that interested me and that was to have its love scene added in Florence,
which I then, of course, didn’t know.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“I came here,” she stated, as she
looked straight and hard ahead of her, “on pique.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“I knew it!” murmured Viola.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Nonsense!” Leslie answered, sharply.
“Why how would you know?”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Dear, I saw you were suffering.”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">That smoothed Leslie; I could see her
feathers settle, and when she went on all the irritation had left her voice.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Someone,” she confided, “and it
doesn’t matter in the least who, since he has gone from my life - I assure you
I have absolutely put every thought of him away - intimated that I could do
nothing but be a butterfly. He was brutal, absolutely brutal!</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“And I, perfectly enraged, said I could
work, and I would show him that I could. And that very night - Vi, are you
sitting on my ostrich feather fan? Oh, all right, I thought I saw something
pink there; no, I don’t mind the scarf.”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Go on, dear,” said Viola, after her
exploration and a wiggle that settled her again.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“That very night,” Leslie continued, “I
telephoned Aunt Sheila, who happened to be in town and at the Plaza, and I told
her I intended to come here and study with Signor Paggi. She was just as mean
as she could be. ‘Very well, Leslie,’ she said in that crisp way in which she often
speaks. ‘But he won’t keep pupils who don’t work.’ ‘He will keep me,’ I answered,
and my voice shook. I was fearfully overwrought. My heart had already been
trampled upon.”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I thought that sounded silly, but Viola
didn’t, because she said, “My dear!” rather breathed it out as if someone had
taken her lungs and squeezed them just as she began to speak.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Leslie looked up at the ceiling and swallowed
hard, in a way she considered tragic, and it was, but it also made me think of
Roberta’s canary when it drinks. Then she rubbed her brow, laughed mirthlessly,
and ended with, “and here I am!”</span><o:p style="font-family: inherit;"></o:p><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“The bathtub’s the worst,” said Viola,
which sort of took the cream off of Leslie’s tragic moment, and I could see
that Leslie didn’t like it, for she frowned.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“I don’t know what to do,” said Leslie
after a small lull, “whether to hunt some other place, or stand this.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Our trunks are all here,” Viola stated,
“and it would be hard to move,” (she had unpacked, and I found later she hated
effort). “I wondered whether we couldn’t get a few little extra things - curtains,
and cushions and so on? And the food we could supplement. I can make fudge and
chicken king.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“I am certain I can make tea,” said Leslie,
“it’s only a matter of the proper pot and a spirit lamp and some water, and
then throwing the stuff in. I’ve seen it done dozens of times.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“And we could buy rolls and things.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Then they paused to consider it.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Don’t most students do that sort of
thing anyway?” I asked.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“It would be Bohemian,” said Leslie, in
a more energetic voice than I’d heard her use before.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“And after we get famous they’ll
photograph this ghastly hole, and say we lived here,” Viola added, with a
far-away, pleased look.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“I’m willing to try it,” agreed Leslie,
in a dull tone I felt she put on. “I don’t care much what happens now, anyway!”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Poor darling!” murmured Viola, and in
that “Poor darling,” I saw the shadow of a row, for I knew that Viola couldn’t
keep that up all the time, and I knew that when she stopped Leslie would be
angry, and I knew that they were too foolishly and sentimentally intimate to
remain good friends. However, I never dreamed for a second, then, that they would
come to me to complain about each other! Which was just what they did!</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It was dreadful for me; there was a
time when I never went into my room without finding one or the other waiting to
sniff out their tales, tales which they almost always prefaced in this way: “I
never talk about my friends,” (sniff). “You can ask,” (gulp) “anyone where I
do,” (sniff) “but I want you to know that I have never been treated,” (gulp-sniff)
“as I have been treated since I came to this place in company,” (real sob)
“with that - that creature!”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">When I think of it now, and then that
first call, I could, as Viola says, “Simply scream, my dear!”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">But I’m getting ’way ahead of my own
story.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">At half past eight, I stood up. “Well,
I guess I’d better go now,” I said, but neither Leslie nor Viola said, “Oh,
don’t hurry,” as I supposed people always did, and so I did go. As I reached
the door – alone - Leslie spoke:</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“We go to see Signor Paggi to-morrow,
don’t we?” she asked.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Yes,” I answered, “at one.”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal">
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“We might as well go together,” she
suggested, “although,” (her tone was too careless, and she avoided looking at
me) “we, of course, won’t expect to act like Siamese triplets, will we?”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“I shall be busy a great deal,” I
stated, as I felt myself flush, and then I went out, and after a stiff goodnight,
went down the hall to my own room. It did seem to me that Leslie had been
unnecessarily unkind in giving that hint, for I had only gone because I
supposed it was polite, and I certainly never would push in! Mother had never
let us do that!</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I was angry, and as I undressed, I
vowed that I would let Leslie entirely alone, and that she could make the first
advances, if any at all were ever made, and I wondered what kind of a man could
like a girl of Leslie’s type, and what he had said that had made her do a thing
that was so evidently distasteful. I was really interested, and I couldn’t help
hoping that this man who had been “pushed from her life” had socked it to her
hard, (and I found later he had!) and I further hoped, without even trying to
help it, that I could squelch her someday. Then I said my prayers and crawled
into bed.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">As I pulled up the blankets one of the
sounds that belong to Florence tinkled in through my widely opened French
windows. Somewhere, in some little church or convent, bells were ringing and
sounding out steps in mellow tones that floated softly through the air. It was
very, very pretty. And I closed my eyes, and I could see lilies-of-the-valley
and blue bells growing near ferns. That doesn’t seem very sensible unless
you’ve heard those bells, but if you have, on a warm-aired, soft Italian night,
you’ll probably understand. Then the bells died gently down to nothing and I
heard another sound, and when I heard that I saw people clogging, for it was a
banjo, and I got out of bed in a hurry, and skipped over to the window without
even waiting to put on my slippers.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I couldn’t see much down in the court,
because the wide banners of light that floated out from the doorways only
seemed to intensify the shadows, and the banjo-player was sitting on a bench by
the side of a back door and not in the light.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">But I could hear, and I heard, in a
very pretty voice with the soft strum of the banjo creeping through:<o:p></o:p></span></p><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Dozens and dozens of girls I have met,<br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Sisters and cousins of men in my set:<br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Tried to be cheerful and give them an
earful<br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Of soft sort of talk, but, oh, gosh!<br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">The strain was something fearful!<br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Always found after a minute or two<br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Just to be civil was all I could do.<br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Now I know why I could never be
contented,<br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">I was looking for a pal like you.”</span></div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And I knew the tune, and it is one I liked,
and the singing in my own language was cheering and rather jolly, and the
feeling the man put into the foolishly light words made me laugh, and I leaned
far out and listened.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Then I heard a snatch of a Neapolitan
song that better fitted the look of the court, and then a bit of opera. The
troubadour faltered on that, and right in the middle of it he stopped, repeated
one phrase, and then called, “Hi, Gino, old Top! Ta tum, ta tum, ta ta, ta tum
- that right?”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal">
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span>And Gino echoed it in his voice, and
answered excitedly, “Si, si, Signor! Brava! Brava, Signor! Brrrava!”</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And then, warmed and cheered and quite
myself again, I went back to bed.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://www.katesvirtualkitchen.com/2023/05/chapter-eight-signor-paggis-compliments.html">Chapter 8</a></span></span></p>Kate Tompkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09710881987151764601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3279099143139296576.post-58695013107679807882023-05-03T11:40:00.002-07:002023-05-03T11:40:23.829-07:00CHAPTER EIGHT SIGNOR PAGGI’S COMPLIMENTS A Modern Trio in an Old Town<p>Signor Paggi’s studio is high up in one of those old palaces that seem to frown at you, and the palace is on the Via Tornabuoni, which is a street where lots of the wealthy and great people of old Florence lived, hundreds of years ago.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">At that time of course, years back, in
the Middle Ages, they knew nothing of modern improvements like portable houses
or the sort of stucco bungalows that get full of cracks after the first frost,
and so they put their houses up in the old-fashioned way, which does seem to
wear well, for they stand today as they stood when they were built.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I liked looking at them; there is a
great deal in my nature that answers to a real fight, and those houses were built
for convenient fighting. Probably then, the architects were fussing over nice,
little windows through which the owner could pour hot oil on a passing enemy, instead
of the sun porches and breakfast rooms and the kind of truck that now occupies
them.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It gave me a romantic, chilly thrill to
see the blank walls of the first stories, which make the streets where the
palaces exist look so cold and stern, for I realized that they didn’t have low
windows in them because if they had had, people who felt like it could throw in
bricks and things of such forceful nature, too easily.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">They needed this type of dwelling
because they scrapped so much. The Medicis, an old Florentine family, and all
dead, but still somewhat talked about, were always fighting somebody or other,
and so were the Strozzis and Tornabuonis, who were also prominent hundreds of
years ago, but still remembered, I found, by a good many. I, personally, don’t
wonder, and I must admit that more than once during my stay in Florence I
wished I could skip back into the Middle Ages for a day or so, and root at just
one good fight.</span></p><p>
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">However, I realize that this is not a
natural wish for “A young woman of refinement,” as Leslie would say.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">We reached Signor Michele Paggi’s
studio at the time when we should, in spite of the fact that Leslie kept everyone
waiting while she took off a veil with brown speckles in it and put on one that
had black dots stuck on it and then, after that was done, went back to hunt a
pair of gloves with gray and white striped gauntlet tops.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“First impressions,” she said, and
almost apologetically, “are everything, don’t you know? And I’d hate my veil
not being right just this first time.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“You have a perfect genius for
assembling the proper accessories,” said Viola, who just a moment before had
grumbled out, “Heavens, what is she doing? I never knew anyone who could fuss
so over nothing!”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And then we went down our long stairs,
through the crowded heart of Florence, up the four flights of stairs that took
us to Signor Paggi’s floor, and down the hall toward the only door that had a
placard on it, to find that the placard had Signor Michele Paggi’s name on it,
and a curt invitation to walk in scrawled below that. We did. And I knew that
my saying I was frightened reveals a yellow streak, but I was frightened, so I
might as well say it.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Mr. Paggi’s verdict meant a very great
deal to me, and I had heard that he sometimes refused to teach. And although I
had tried not to remember that, I did remember it as people do remember things
they try to cover in their minds. Those covered thoughts are always straying
out! You are forever seeing a corner of one trailing out from under the thing you’ve
thrown over it, or at least I am, and Mr. Paggi’s turning people away was one
of them. I didn’t know quite what I would do if he turned me away, because of
Miss Sheila and Mother and all the rest. They expected so much of me and I felt
as if I’d die if I couldn’t keep them from disappointment. And of course I had
my own dreams too.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Well, Leslie and Viola were entirely at
ease, and somehow, I can’t explain, it didn’t help me, in fact their ease made
me more uncomfortable. And while they walked around saying, “Adorable place!”
“So much atmosphere!” and things like that, and wiggled their fingers to limber
them up, I sat in a chair that looked better than it felt and swallowed and
swallowed and swallowed, and almost wished that I had been like Roberta who
plays nothing but rag, and ukelele accompaniments.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">After quite a little time of this I saw
a copy of the Saturday Evening Post on the table, and got it, and I was really
beginning to be absorbed in something by Ring Lardner when an Italian girl came
in. She was a sullen type, and she said “Good day,” without smiling.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“We are waiting for Signor Paggi,” Leslie
said in her sweetest way, but it didn’t melt the girl who answered in the
short-clipped manner that many Italians speak English, ending each word
abruptly and completely before she started another. And she spoke in a level
too, which made her seem most unsympathetic, and fussed over the leaves of a
big ledger as she answered.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“I don’t know whether he see you,” she
stated.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“But,” (Leslie laughed in an irritated,
tried way) “we have an appointment!”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“He don’t care. When he have headache he
don’t care for devil. You can wait, you can go, it is the same.” And then she
disdainfully fluttered the big leaves she had been turning slowly.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal">
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Will you be good enough to tell him,”
said Leslie in a tight controlled way, “that Miss Parrish, that Miss Leslie
Parrish is here?”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The girl looked up. “No,” she answered,
“I do not wish to have the book push through the air at me, so” (she made a
hitchy, overhead girl-gesture of throwing) “and he do not care who you are. Why
should he care who you are?” she ended, her eyes now on Leslie and boring into
Leslie. It was almost like a movie!</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Really,” broke out Leslie, and then
she stopped and shrugged her shoulders and walked over to stand by a window
that had a row of century plants on its sill. And here she hummed to pretend
that the whole matter was beneath her notice, but she tapped her foot and I knew
that she was angry.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Then we waited, and I never felt as if
I did so much waiting as I did then, although the waiting wasn’t stretched
across more than half an hour. It was stretched tightly, and that makes all the
difference!</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">At last the inner door opened - we came
to call what lay behind that door “The Torture Chamber” - and a woman came
flouncing out. After her passing, a little man with stiff, coarse hair which
stood straight up from his head, and a waxed mustache, paced up and down inside
the little room. He looked as if he should be wearing a red uniform trimmed with
gilt braid and snapping a short, limber whip at crouching lions; I’ve seen
dozens just like him in cages!<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Temperamental!” Leslie whispered, and
she was right!</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Fascinating,” Viola answered, in the
same kind of a low, highly charged wheeze. Then we waited some more.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">At last Signor Paggi came to the door
and stared at us.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Well?” he snapped, and I was glad to
leave the business to Leslie, who stood up and spoke.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Signor Paggi,” she said, “we have been
sent here, because in America you are regarded as the most marvelous person…”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“I do not make fools play,” he broke
in, “You remember that! You have appointment?”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Yes,” Leslie answered, and with a good
deal of resentment in her tone, “I told your office girl, but she, in a manner
I must, in fairness to your interests, Signor Paggi, tell you was insolent,
told me…”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Very good secretary,” (he again interrupted)
“I can get many pupils, but only in my life once have I found the good
secretary. Come in.”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And, silent, we followed him.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The room was large and almost empty. It
had a bench in it, a table on which was some music, a piano, and near that the
chair that Signor Paggi sat in when he wasn’t too agitated to sit.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal">
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“You first,” he said, almost before we
had crossed the threshold, and he pointed at me. I went to the piano and sat
down. “Well, play!” he barked and I think I played something of MacDowell’s.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Stop!” I heard. I stopped.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“What do you see?”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Nothing,” I answered.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“It is very clear you see nothing. It
is awful. You play like a peeg! Toodle, toodle, toodle, SQUEAK! Oh,” and then
he clasped his hand to his forehead and glared up at the ceiling.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“You must see peecture,” he said after
a moment of silence, “a pretty peecture; I give you time to theenk.” (He did)
“Now go!”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And I did.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I don’t know what I played, but I saw our
living room; the lounge that has grown lumpy from the twins jumping on it; the
piles of popular music on the piano; mother’s darning in a big basket by the
table; the Boston fern in the bay window; even a pan of fudge that didn’t
harden, with a knife in it, and Roberta’s knitting - always a tie - half poked under
a sofa cushion.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And I suppose that doesn’t seem like a
pretty picture, but it was pretty to me, and it carried me through.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“You can take lessons from me,” Signor
Paggi said, as I finished. I thanked him in a little squeaky voice that must
have sounded funny.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“And now,” he went on, “you can get up.
You theenk you seet upon my piano stool all day? You do not.”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And then I got up and went over to the
bench, and my knees shook more than they had as I went over to the piano, which
was so silly that it made me ashamed. Leslie took my place, and I don’t think
she was much frightened. She was pretty sure of her playing she told us later,
and she was used to playing for people, and her assurance I thought would help
her, but it didn’t. Signor Paggi let her play all her selection, before he
spoke, and as he did he cleaned his nails with a toothpick.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Are you deaf?” he asked in an
interested, remote way.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Certainly not,” Leslie answered
haughtily.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Ah, how greatly then do I pity you! To
hear yourself play! Oh, my!” (And again he clasped his forehead and rolled his
eyes at the ceiling) “And also, you improve on Mr. Bach,” he went on, after his
tragedy moment was past. “It is very kind of you to show the master how he
should do. No doubt he is grateful! I think he turn in the grave. Mr.
Paderewski have great sense; to work for a country who is lost is better than
to teach some I have met. Oh, my! Some fool teach you that in girls’ school? You
will drop airs with me, and play what is upon the sheet. You see?”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal">
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span>Leslie, with scarlet cheeks, and bright,
angry eyes, got up, and nodded. Then Viola was summoned, and I felt most sorry
for her because she had no nerve and she wobbled all the way over to the piano,
but she did better than either Leslie or I, and she got off with “Skip that and
thanks to heaven it will be shorter!”</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And so ended that hard half hour that
seemed hours long, and started all our winter’s work in Florence.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://www.katesvirtualkitchen.com/2023/05/chapter-nine-strolling-picnic-modern.html"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Chapter 9</span></a></p>Kate Tompkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09710881987151764601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3279099143139296576.post-11755780293773860642023-05-03T08:08:00.008-07:002023-05-03T08:08:57.237-07:00CHAPTER NINE - A STROLLING PICNIC A Modern Trio in an Old Town<p>After we had made a slinking exit that took us into the outer room, and the girl, at a nod from Signor Paggi, had put our names down in the book and given us slips upon which were our names and lesson hours, we started down stairs and no one said a word. I think we would have kept quiet for a long, long time if I hadn’t started laughing, but I did, very suddenly and without really knowing that I wanted to, and Viola, after a moment, joined me in a weak, close-to-hysterical way. Leslie didn’t laugh and her eyes were hard and her chin set, and she was so angry that she walked as if she had been wound up too tightly. She made me think of “Mr. Wog,” a mechanical toy man, that the twins start into the living room from the dining room door sometimes when Roberta has company. It makes her very angry, because she says it looks so silly, and she says that it naturally embarrasses a man to realize that someone has been listening to every word he said. The twins told me that they wait around in the dark under the dining room table until they hear the caller tell Roberta that she is so sympathetic, or beautiful, or that they have long admired her, and then they crawl out with their wound toy and start it in. Louise, who is the elder by two minutes, said that “Mr. Wog” almost always broke into Roberta’s soft, “Oh, do you think so?” and that they always had to stuff their handkerchiefs right into their mouths to keep from screaming with giggles.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">But to get on, Leslie walked as Mr. Wog
walks, and when she spoke she did so between sharply indrawn breaths and in a
way that told a lot she didn’t trouble to put into words.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Aunt Sheila knew this old devil,” she
said, “I make no apologies for calling him that, and what she did was vicious,
positively vicious! She—she said I wouldn’t stick, made me say I would, in
fact,” (she paused, and had to draw several quieting breaths before she could
go on) “in fact I wagered her a cottage that father gave me last birthday, a heavenly
sweet place up on Lake Placid, I wagered her that, that I would stick it out
and study with this horrible person! And if I can ever punish Ben Forbes for all
this, I will consider that life has given me all the sweetness I shall ever
crave!”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Then we stepped out into the street.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Of course it seemed about sixteen times
as bright as it really was, because both the halls and Mr. Paggi’s rooms had
been dark, and it seemed more good to be out than I can describe. After I
blinked my eyes into adjustment with the outdoor glare, I stole a side glance
at Leslie and wondered what sticking it out - if she could stick it out – would
do for her? I knew that she would either flare up and leave it all, or that
she’d have to change, and I remembered how Howard McDonald, who is Elaine’s
brother, had learned to keep his temper by playing baseball. The training, and
the having to abide by decisions that he thought unfair had been fine for him,
and after a season of playing short-stop, everybody wondered whether he had
changed, or whether they’d been mean? “Will you, can you stand it?” I
questioned inside, and Leslie answered, almost immediately, quite as if I’d put
my wonder into words.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“I am going to go through with it,” she
stated through set teeth. “If I die of disease from living in that frightful
hole, or from shocked, shattered nerves after a lesson, perhaps Aunt Sheila may
have a question or two to ask of herself!”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“He couldn’t have known who you are,
dear,” said Viola, who was groping around to find the right key.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Leslie laughed shortly.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Aunt Sheila said I depended on that,”
she confided. “That was during one of her all-too-frequent moments of flattery.
Sometimes I think I have been the most misunderstood girl who has ever lived!
And oh, how I ache, alone, in my fumbling through the dark!”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">She stared ahead like everything after
that; I guess she was trying to look dramatic. Viola said, “Poor darling, I
understand.” And then Leslie said, “I,” (her voice dropped and broke) “I am
close to fainting. I need tea,” and so they went to Doney’s which is the fanciest
restaurant in Florence and marked “expensive” in Baedeker. After the remark
about Siamese triplets I didn’t intend to have her think I wanted to be asked
to her party, so I said, “I must leave you here,” although I had no idea where
I was, or where I should be going.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Must you, really?” Leslie asked so vaguely,
that I got mad all over again and answered with, “I generally say what I mean,”
which of course was not polite. Then, feeling a little ashamed of myself, I
turned and left them and began to wonder which Italian I should ask where I was
and where I was going - in English; but I kept passing them, and going farther
and farther all the time because the doing it seemed hard.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Then suddenly I saw someone who was
ahead of me, and I hurried, for I knew the gray homespun coat and the swing of
the gray hat brim.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Wait!” I called, and he turned, and
then he was laughing down at me, and saying, “I just went up all those stairs
that lead to the Pension Dante to hunt you, and found you out, and found where
you were. Now tell me about it!”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Oh, Mr. Wake!” I said, and I drew a deep
breath because I was so glad to see him, and so relieved over finding someone
who could talk as I did.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Pretty bad?” he questioned, with a
kind look.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal">
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“I’m so glad to see you,” I stated,
which wasn’t exactly an answer, but it pleased Mr. Wake, for he said, “Why,
dear child, how mighty fine of you!” and pumped my hands up and down in his.
Then he said, “Look here, I’ve a plan. I say we go collect some food, spoil
your dinner, add another inch to my tummy, and have a picnic. Like ’em?”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Love them!” I answered.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">His eyes twinkled down at me, and all the
little laugh wrinkles on his temples stood out.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Good!” he said, “I know a little shop
down here, on a dark arched street, where Dante may have passed his Beatrice,
and in that little shop there are cakes that must make the angels long to come
down on parole. And near this bake shop is a wine shop, where I shall buy you either
some vermouth, or some coffee, and my plan is to collect our goods, assemble
them, and then eat. Is it welcome?”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“That’s exactly the sort of thing that
suits my temperament,” I answered. “I can hardly forgive a person who uses a
spoon on an ice cream cone!”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">That made him laugh, although I don’t
know why, and he took my hand in his, and drew it through his arm.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Amazingly improper I am told,” he said
as he did it, “but a fine way for comrades to walk, and I feel that we are
going to be real comrades and friends.”</span><o:p style="font-family: inherit;"></o:p><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“I hope so,” I said, for I was liking
him more and more all the time.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Then we didn’t talk for a little time,
and I began to enjoy looking into the windows of the smart shops that are on
the Via Tornabuoni, and at the gay crowds that shift and change so constantly.
There were dandies lounging at the curbs, swinging their canes, curling their mustaches,
and searching through the crowd, with soft-sentimental brown eyes, for some
pretty girl at whom they could stare - to stare, in Italy, is a compliment! Then
there were bright spots made by the women with their high-heaped trays of
flowers, and the funny spots made by the insistent little boys who try to sell
postcards and sometimes can’t be discouraged even by a sharp “Basta!” which
seems to mean “Get out!” and “Enough!” and other things of that kind, all
rolled into one!</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In the street, the sharp cracking of
the cabmen’s whips and their shrill, high calls made a new sound for me to add
to my collection, and the beautiful motors which slid by made me wish that
Elaine McDonald could have one glimpse; because one day at Roberta’s sewing club
when all the rest of the girls were saying that my going away was fine and
everything, Elaine had said that she would rather stay in Pennsylvania than go
and hobnob with organ grinders, and I think she was jealous.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I liked all this more than I can say,
and with Mr. Wake I wasn’t bothered by the crowds. Florence has about the same
population as Baltimore, although Mr. Wake said it didn’t seem so because so
many Italians crowd in a few rooms, and they live so tightly packed. One can walk
to the edge of the city anywhere easily, for it doesn’t cover much space, but
to me it seemed very large and, at first, confusing.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">After we had walked some time we turned
in a tiny street that had an archway over it, and seemed as dark as ink from
contrast to the sunny street we’d left. I liked it, and, as I picked my way
over the big cobblestones, I said so.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“It is a part of Florence that most
tourists miss,” said Mr. Wake, “and it is too bad, for it is the most
characteristic part. Ah, here we are,” he ended and we turned in a tiny doorway
from which came the pleasant smell of hot sugar and warm bread.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">We got our cakes - which were very good
- and took them in our hands, and went on a few doors, around a corner, up a
few steps - and those right in the street at the back of some great palace - and
then we turned into a broader way and found a shop that had the entire front open
- they roll up during the daytime and stay up even through all the winter - and
here I had coffee and Mr. Wake a tiny glass of wine, and we ate and drank as
the girl who had served us looked on and smiled. It was very pleasant, and I
had a fine time! I told him about my interview with Signor Paggi and he thought
I had got off easily.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal">
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">After we had eaten and talked we walked
up past the Loggia dei Lanzi which has statues in it that commemorate all sorts
of historic events and faces the square in which there is a replica of Michael
Angelo’s David; the square is large, and very busy with quickly passing people,
and the people who pause to make small groups that are always dissolving, and
ever reforming; and these people always look futile. I didn’t know why, but Mr.
Wake said that the Palazzo Vecchio, which is at right angles to the Loggia dei
Lanzi and looks scornfully down over everything, made it.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“See that old building over there?” he
said, as he pointed with his cane.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Um hum,” I answered, as I looked way
up at the great big tower, and tried to keep my mouth shut while doing it. I
don’t know why it is so easy to look up with your mouth open!</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“In there,” said Mr. Wake, “are ghosts
who talk of making war upon a neighboring town. They fear that Fiesole is
growing too strong, Fiesole that looks down from the hill behind you.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Did they fight like that?” I asked.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Exactly like that! And without putting
anything on the bill-boards about it beforehand. You see Italy was - not so long
ago either –a land of little countries, for each city had its rulers, and
fought for its rights, to keep its possessions, or to gain others. And a lot of
the plans went on in there,” and again he pointed with his cane.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“How old is it?” I asked, and then he told
me and I gasped, for it was begun late in 1200 and finished in 1314.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Not so old for Florence,” said Mr.
Wake, after my gasp, “you know the original Battistero, or Baptistery, was
built probably in the seventh or eighth century. It was remodeled to its
present condition, practically, in 1200.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“No, I didn’t,” I said, and humbly.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Well, you’ve lots of time. And you’ll
need it. There’s lots to see; the house where Dante lived, and the tomb of
Galileo, and the grave of Mrs. Browning, and the literary landmarks. Thomas
Hardy wrote things in this town, and George Eliot came here, and oh, ever so
many more. And right before you in the middle of this square Savonarola was
burned.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And I had to ask who he was; I knew
that I had heard the name, but I am lots better at remembering faces then I am
at remembering names.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“The Billy Sunday of the year of our Lord,
1490,” said Mr. Wake, “who, after he had had more good art burned than has ever
been produced since, displeased his followers, the Florentines, who tortured him,
poor chap, and right over in that building, Jane, and then burned him.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Why did he want the pictures burned?”
I asked.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“The subjects hadn’t any slickers on,”
said Mr. Wake.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Feel anything here?” asked Mr. Wake,
after we had been quiet a few minutes.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“I feel as if I don’t matter much,” I
answered.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“That’s it. The old building smiles
scornfully, and says, ‘You will pass, but I shall stay!’”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Then we walked across the square
between the cabs and motors, with the crowd, made up of soldiers and officers,
and the big policemen – the carabinieri - who wear flowing capes and feathers
in their hats, and always travel in pairs. As we reached the other side Mr.
Wake told me one more thing, and then took me home.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I noticed a statue of a man who was
carrying off a beautiful woman who struggled. There was lots of action in it;
the girl looked as if she could play forward and the man looked as if he would
be a whopper at the bat.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Mr. Wake saw me looking at them and
said: “That’s the way they did it in the old days, and, no doubt, had I lived
then, I wouldn’t be a bachelor. Would you like the story?”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Very much,” I answered.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Well,” he said, as he twirled his
cane, “this was the way of it. Very early in the history of Rome, the debutante
crop must have been low, for there weren’t enough wives for the young men, who
were up and coming and probably wanted someone to darn their socks and to smile
when they told their jokes. And then perhaps there was an extra income tax on
the unmarried; they knew a lot about torture those days and so it is not
impossible! Anyway, the Romans made a great festival in honor of Neptune, and
they invited all the neighboring people to come and bring their families, and
in the midst of the games the young Roman dandies rushed in among the
spectators, and each selected a maiden that he thought he would like for his
wife - it had to be a case of love at first sight, Jane - and carried her off.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Soon after, the Sabine men, who were probably
considerably put out, came bearing down upon Rome with loud shouts and the
brandishing of glittering steel, and I myself can see the glare of it in the
sun this day! But the Romans drove them back that time. However - and now we
have the real nub of the story, Jane, and the real confession of the heart of
woman - although the records have it that the Sabine brides put up a most
unholy row when they started out upon their wedding journeys, they evidently
liked the job of being Roman wives, and really respected the men who didn’t
even give them time to pack or to cry just once again on mother’s shoulder, for
before the second battle opened between the enraged and outraged Sabines and
the conquering males of Rome, the Roman wives, once Sabine girls, rushed
between the warring factions and pled so prettily for peace that it was
granted, and the story goes on that the two people were so united that their
Kings reigned together, and that all thereafter was both peaceful and
prosperous.”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Oh!” I said. I did like that story.
“Did you ever feel like doing that!” I asked, for I thought it might be a
confession of men as well as of women.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“I have,” he answered, “and if I had, perhaps,
perhaps it would have been better!” and then he smiled down at me, but the
smile didn’t bring out his laugh wrinkles, but instead it made him look
strangely old and tired, which made me wonder. We walked on, for a little time,
silently.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“By the way,” I said as we reached the
covered corridor that is opposite the big Uffizi Gallery, “my Fairy Godmother
writes letters!”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal">
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“And floats them to you upon dew?”
asked Mr. Wake, “or does a spider throw them to you with a silver, silken
thread?”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“No,” I responded, “she puts a blue
charm on the upper right hand corner, and the letter comes to me!”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“And something of a marvel at that,”
commented Mr. Wake. Then he dismissed fancies, and added, “You have heard from
her?”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Twice,” I answered, “I had a letter
yesterday, and one that was posted only an hour after it came today.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“I’ve a certain feeling, a want for
seeing how fairy godmothers write,” said Mr. Wake.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“It’s in my pocket,” I told him, and we
stopped and I fumbled around until I found the large, stiff square.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“There,” I said. Mr. Wake took it.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“No doubt you think me a strange old
chap,” he said.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Oh, no,” I answered, “a great many
people are interested in writing nowadays.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“It isn’t that, but your fairy godmother
brought to my mind the years when I believed in fairies. A very nice writing,
isn’t it? I think it is most charming, don’t you, Jane?”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“See how it looks on the page,” I said,
taking it from him quickly, and then the letter from its envelope. “It is
pretty, isn’t it?”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“‘Dear, dear Child:’” he read, and then
suddenly, as if he were irritated, or had been hurt sharply, added, “Here,
here, I don’t want to be reading your letters! And my soul, I must be getting
you home! I’ve a dinner engagement over south of the Arno, and I will have to
speed up a bit.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And we did.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">*</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">*</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">*</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">*</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">*</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">At dinner Leslie was uppish and unpleasant.
I think she was still smarting from Mr. Paggi’s attack, and that her pride was
so shaken she had to pretend some of the assurance that she had lost that
afternoon. Anyway, something made her get into a very elaborate dinner dress,
and put a high, Spanish comb in her hair, and wear her big, platinum-set ring
of diamonds, and a little flexible pearl-set bracelet, and a platinum chain
with pearls on that. She looked beautiful, but Mother never thought it was in
good taste to wear things that are unsuitable, and I don’t either.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Leslie sailed in after Beata had
brought in the soup, and Miss Meek, with whom Leslie had struck up a feud at
the first meal, burst out with, “Oh, my eye! Look at the Queen of Sheba!” which
seemed to make Leslie awfully mad, so when Miss Bannister asked me what I had
done during the afternoon, I told everyone - to change the current - in spite of
the fact that Miss Bannister had said, “One of my deaf days, and it doesn’t
matter in the least, don’t you know. Only asked to be polite. Pass the bread.”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Mr. Wake?” said Leslie, after I had
told of my walk, and the Loggia dei Lanzi and the Sabine story. “And he took
you into an alley restaurant to eat? How odd!”</span><o:p style="font-family: inherit;"></o:p><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Perhaps the poor old bounder is jolly
hard up,” said Miss Meek, who tries to be kind to people she likes.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“It wasn’t that,” I said, and I said it
sharply, for I was getting more and more out of temper with Leslie. “We were
hunting around for atmosphere; you ought to know what it is, Miss Parrish, you
talk about it enough. He has a villa out the Fiesole way and I guess a person
with a villa wouldn’t worry about a few cents, although I would like him just
as well if he had to!”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“That’s the staunch-hearted flapper!”
put in Miss Meek, as Leslie murmured, “So many of the climbing sort rent
fearful little places - really no more than chicken coops, and then call them
villas! So amusing.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Did you mean my friend?” I asked quickly,
as I felt angry hot spots burn on my cheeks. You have to fasten Leslie. She
likes to be mean in a remote, detached way, which is the meanest way one can be
mean! Of course she didn’t own up to it; I might have known she wouldn’t!
Instead, she answered with, “Really, why would I mean your friend whom I’ve
never seen? What possible interest would I have in him?”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I didn’t answer that; I couldn’t, I was
too angry. I ate instead, and so fast that I afterward came as close to feeling
that I had a stomach as I ever do. If I had known then how Leslie would come to
feel about Mr. Wake, and how she was one day to say, “Why didn’t you tell me he
wrote books?” I would have been comforted. But the veil that covers the future
is both heavy and thick, (I guess I must have gotten that out of some book, but
I can’t remember where) and that evening I was to have nothing to comfort me.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Something diverted me on the way to my
room, and that was Beata, who sat in the hall with her head on her pretty arms
that were dropped on a table.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Why, Beata!” I said, for she looked so
forlorn, and I put my hand on her shoulder. That made her raise her head, and
she looked at me and tried to smile, but there were tear stains on her cheeks and
her heavy lashes were moist, and I saw that the red tie was crumpled up in her hand
and I was certain that the tie was a little link in her story.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span>“Oh, Signorina,” she whimpered, and
timidly groped for my hand, and when she found it she held to it tightly, while
I patted her shoulder with the free one.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It seemed strange to stand there with
her, understanding and helping each other without a word, when Leslie and I
could not understand or help each other, with all our words in common.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Leslie sailed by at that moment, and
raised her brows as she looked at the tableau I made with Beata.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">She thought it was common. But it was
not. I am not always certain of my judgment of her then, because at that time I
didn’t like her, but I know I am right in saying that she at that moment was
the ordinary soul, for she would have gone past need, and raised her brows in passing!</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://www.katesvirtualkitchen.com/2023/05/chapter-ten-cream-puffs-twilight-and.html"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Chapter 10</span></a></p>Kate Tompkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09710881987151764601noreply@blogger.com0