The man of fashion blushed as he inhaled the first smoke created by her fire.

Rachel dropped the heavenly emblem, all burning, into the ash-bin of the range, and resumed her work.

Louis coughed.  “Any law against sitting down?” he asked.

“You’re very welcome,” she replied primly.

“I didn’t know I might smoke,” he said.

She made no answer at first, but just as Louis had ceased to expect an answer, she said—­

“I should think if you can smoke in the sitting-room you can smoke in the kitchen—­shouldn’t you?”

“I should,” said he.

There was silence, but silence not disagreeable.  Louis, lolling in the chair, and slightly rocking it, watched Rachel at her task.  She completely immersed spoons and forks in the warm water, and then rubbed them with a brush like a large nail-brush, giving particular attention to the inside edges of the prongs of the forks; and then she laid them all wet on a thick cloth to the right of the basin.  But of the knives she immersed only the blades, and took the most meticulous care that no drop of water should reach the handles.

“I never knew knives and forks and things were washed like that,” observed Louis.

“They generally aren’t,” said Rachel.  “But they ought to be.  I leave all the other washing-up for the charwoman in the morning, but I wouldn’t trust these to her.” (The charwoman had been washing up cutlery since before Rachel was born.) “They’re all alike,” said Rachel.

Louis acquiesced sagely in this broad generalization as to charwomen.

“Why don’t you wash the handles of the knives?” he queried.

“It makes them come loose.”

“Really?”

“Do you mean to say you didn’t know that water, especially warm water with soda in it, loosens the handles?” She showed astonishment, but her gaze never left the table in front of her.

“Not me!”

“Well, I should have thought that everybody knew that.  Some people use a jug, and fill it up with water just high enough to cover the blades, and stick the knives in to soak.  But I don’t hold with that because of the steam, you see.  Steam’s nearly as bad as water for the handles.  And then some people drop the knives wholesale into a basin just for a second, to wash the handles.  But I don’t hold with that, either.  What I say is that you can get the handles clean with the cloth you wipe them dry with.  That’s what I say.”

“And so there’s soda in the water?”

“A little.”

“Well, I never knew that either!  It’s quite a business, it seems to me.”