She was recalled to the more sordid but less criminal surroundings of real life by a strong pungent smell.  She sniffed, and then her heart suddenly sank as she realized that the cereal was burning.  She recognized a peculiarly disagreeable flavor about which she had often scolded the cook, thinking such carelessness on the part of one of her employees to be absolutely inexcusable.

She ran to the head of the cellar stairs.  “Mr. Riatt!” she called.

He was now shaking down the furnace, and the noise completely drowned her voice.  “Oh, dear, what a noisy man he is,” she thought and when he had finished, she called again:  “Mr. Riatt!”

This time he heard.  “What is it?” he answered.

“Mr. Riatt, what shall I do?  The cereal is burning terribly.”

“I should think it was,” he said.  “I can smell it down here.”  He sprang up the stairs and snatched the pot from the stove.  “You must have stopped stirring it,” he said.

“Oh, I didn’t stir it!”

“What did you do?”

“You didn’t tell me to stir it.”

“I certainly did.”

“No, you said just to watch it.”

Riatt looked at her.  “Well,” he said, “I’ve heard of glances cutting like a knife, but never stirring like a spoon.  If I were a really just man,” he went on, “I’d make you eat that burnt mess for your supper, but I’m so absurdly indulgent that I’ll share some of my bacon and biscuits with you.”

His tone as well as his words were irritating to one not used to criticism in any form.

“I don’t care for that sort of joke,” she said.

“I wasn’t aware of having made a joke.”

“I mean your attitude as if I were a child that had been naughty.”

“It wouldn’t be so bad if you were a child.”

“You consider me to blame because that wretched cereal chose to burn?”

“Emphatically I do.”

“How perfectly preposterous,” said Christine, and a sense of bitter injustice seethed within her.  “Why in the world should I be expected to know how to cook?”

“I’m a little too busy at the moment to explain it to you,” Riatt answered, “but I promise to take it up with you at a later date.”

There was something that sounded almost like a threat in this.  She turned away, and walking to the window stood staring out into the darkness.  He was really quite a disagreeable young man, she thought.  How true it was, that you couldn’t tell what people were like when everything was going smoothly.  She wondered if he would always be like that—­trying to keep one up to one’s duty and making one feel stupid and ignorant about the merest trifles.

“Well, this rich meal is ready,” he said presently.

She turned around.  The table was set—­she couldn’t help wondering where he had found the kitchen knives and forks—­the bacon was sizzling, the tin of biscuits open, and the coffee bubbling and gurgling in its glass retort.