The Brimming Cup eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 488 pages of information about The Brimming Cup.

The Brimming Cup eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 488 pages of information about The Brimming Cup.

“Don’t you think maybe you’re too much bothered about other people, anyhow?” he suggested, mildly; “whether they’re stupid or have said things or not?  What difference does it make, if it’s a question of what you yourself feel?  I’d be just as satisfied if you gave all your time to discovering the wonderful possibilities in what I say.  It would give me a chance to conceal the fact that I get all out of breath trying to follow what you mean.”

This surprised her into a sudden laugh, outright and ringing.  He looked down at her sparkling face, brilliant in its mirth as a child’s, and said seriously, “You must instantly think of something perfectly prosaic and commonplace to say, or I shall be forced to take you in my arms and kiss you a great many times, which might have Lord knows what effect on that gloomy-minded ticket-seller back of us who already has his suspicions.”

She rose instantly to the possibilities and said smoothly, swiftly, whimsically, with the accent of drollery, “I’m very particular about what sort of frying-pan I use.  I insist on having a separate one for the fritures of fish, and another for the omelets, used only for that:  I’m a very fine and conscientious housekeeper, I’d have you know, and all the while we lived in Bayonne I ran the house because Mother never got used to French housekeeping ways.  I was the one who went to market . . . oh, the gorgeous things you get in the Bayonne market, near enough Spain, you know, for real Malaga grapes with the aroma still on them, and for Spanish quince-paste.  I bossed the old Basque woman we had for cook and learned how to cook from her, using a great many onions for everything.  And I learned how to keep house by the light of nature, since it had to be done.  And I’m awfully excited about having a house of my own, just as though I weren’t the extremely clever, cynical, disillusioned, fascinating musical genius everybody knows me to be:  only let me warn you that the old house we are going to live in will need lots done to it.  Your uncle never opened the dreadful room he called the parlor, and never used the south wing at all, where all the sunshine comes in.  And the pantry arrangements are simply humorous, they’re so inadequate.  I don’t know how much of that four thousand dollars you are going to want to spare for remodeling the mill, but I will tell you now, that I will go on strike if you don’t give me a better cook-stove than your Uncle’s Toucle had to work with.”

He had been listening with an appreciative grin to her nimble-witted chatter, but at this he brought her up short by an astonished, “Who had?  What had?  What’s that . . .  Toucle?”

She laughed aloud again, delighted at having startled him into curiosity.  “Toucle.  Toucle.  Don’t you think it a pretty name?  Will you believe me when I say I know all about Ashley?”

“Oh, go on, tell me!” he begged.  “You don’t mean to say that my Uncle Benton had pep enough to have a scandal in his life?”

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
The Brimming Cup from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.