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Page 29
Jane padded softly to the odour, following her small nose. It led
her to the pantry, where under ordinary circumstances the patients'
trays were prepared by a pantrymaid, the food being shipped there
from the kitchen on a lift. Clearly the circumstances were not
ordinary. The pantrymaid was not in sight.
Instead, the red-haired person was standing by the window scraping
busily at a blackened piece of toast. There was a rank odour of
boiling tea in the air.
"Damnation!" said the red-haired person, and flung the toast into a
corner where there already lay a small heap of charred breakfast
hopes. Then he saw Jane.
"I fixed the bell, didn't I?" he remarked. "I say, since you claim
to know so much about cooking, I wish you'd make some toast."
"I didn't say I knew much," snapped Jane, holding her kimono round
her. "I said I knew more than you knew about politeness."
The red-haired person smiled again, and then, making a deep bow,
with a knife in one hand and a toaster in the other, he said:
"Madam, I prithee forgive me for my untoward conduct of an hour
since. Say but the word and I replace the bell."
"I won't make any toast," said Jane, looking at the bread with
famished eyes.
"Oh, very well," said the red-haired person with a sigh. "On your
head be it!"
"But I'll tell you how to do it," conceded Jane, "if you'll explain
who you are and what you are doing in that costume and where the
nurses are."
The red-haired person sat down on the edge of the table and looked
at her.
"I'll make a bargain with you," he said. "There's a convalescent
typhoid in a room near yours who swears he'll go down to the village
for something to eat in his--er--hospital attire unless he's fed
soon. He's dangerous, empty. He's reached the cannibalistic stage.
If he should see you in that ravishing pink thing, I--I wouldn't
answer for the consequences. I'll tell you everything if you'll make
him six large slices of toast and boil him four or five eggs, enough
to hold him for a while. The tea's probably ready; it's been boiling
for an hour."
Hunger was making Jane human. She gathered up the tail of her
kimono, and stepping daintily into the pantry proceeded to spread
herself a slice of bread and butter.
"Where is everybody?" she asked, licking some butter off her thumb
with a small pink tongue.
_Oh, I am the cook and the captain bold,
And the mate of the Nancy brig,
And the bosun tight and the midshipmite,
And the crew of the captain's gig._
recited the red-haired person.
"You!" said Jane with the bread halfway to her mouth.
"Even I," said the red-haired person. "I'm the superintendent, the
staff, the training school, the cooks, the furnace man and the
ambulance driver."
Jane was pouring herself a cup of tea, and she put in milk and sugar
and took a sip or two before she would give him the satisfaction of
asking him what he meant. Anyhow, probably she had already guessed.
Jane was no fool.
"I hope you're getting the salary list," she said, sitting on the
pantry girl's chair and, what with the tea inside and somebody to
quarrel with, feeling more like herself. "My father's one of the
directors, and somebody gets it."
The red-haired person sat on the radiator and eyed Jane. He looked
slightly stunned, as if the presence of beauty in a Billie Burke
chignon and little else except a kimono was almost too much for him.
From somewhere near by came a terrific thumping, as of some one
pounding a hairbrush on a table. The red-haired person shifted along
the radiator a little nearer Jane, and continued to gloat.
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