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Page 86
A little sigh came from the bed.
"'Way of Preparing: Wipe the tenderloins with a damp cloth. With
a sharp knife make a deep pocket lengthwise in each tenderloin.
Cut your pork into long thin strips and, with a needle, lard each
tenderloin. Melt the butter in the water, add the seasoning and
the cracker crumbs, combining all thoroughly. Now fill each
pocket in the tenderloin with this stuffing. Place the
tenderloins--'"
A snore sounded from the pillows, punctuating the recital like a
mark of exclamation. Ashe laid down the book and peered into the
darkness beyond the rays of the bed lamp. His employer slept.
Ashe switched off the light and crept to the door. Out in the
passage he stopped and listened. All was still. He stole
downstairs.
* * *
George Emerson sat in his bedroom in the bachelors' wing of the
castle smoking a cigarette. A light of resolution was in his
eyes. He glanced at the table beside his bed and at what was on
that table, and the light of resolution flamed into a glare of
fanatic determination. So might a medieval knight have looked on
the eve of setting forth to rescue a maiden from a dragon.
His cigarette burned down. He looked at his watch, put it back,
and lit another cigarette. His aspect was the aspect of one
waiting for the appointed hour. Smoking his second cigarette, he
resumed his meditations. They had to do with Aline Peters.
George Emerson was troubled about Aline Peters. Watching over
her, as he did, with a lover's eye, he had perceived that about
her which distressed him. On the terrace that morning she had
been abrupt to him--what in a girl of less angelic disposition
one might have called snappy. Yes, to be just, she had snapped at
him. That meant something. It meant that Aline was not well. It
meant what her pallor and tired eyes meant--that the life she was
leading was doing her no good.
Eleven nights had George dined at Blandings Castle, and on each
of the eleven nights he had been distressed to see the manner in
which Aline, declining the baked meats, had restricted herself to
the miserable vegetable messes which were all that doctor's
orders permitted to her suffering father. George's pity had its
limits. His heart did not bleed for Mr. Peters. Mr. Peters' diet
was his own affair. But that Aline should starve herself in this
fashion, purely by way of moral support for her parent, was
another matter.
George was perhaps a shade material. Himself a robust young man
and taking what might be called an outsize in meals, he attached
perhaps too much importance to food as an adjunct to the perfect
life. In his survey of Aline he took a line through his own
requirements; and believing that eleven such dinners as he had
seen Aline partake of would have killed him he decided that his
loved one was on the point of starvation.
No human being, he held, could exist on such Barmecide feasts.
That Mr. Peters continued to do so did not occur to him as a flaw
in his reasoning. He looked on Mr. Peters as a sort of machine.
Successful business men often give that impression to the young.
If George had been told that Mr. Peters went along on gasoline,
like an automobile, he would not have been much surprised. But
that Aline--his Aline--should have to deny herself the exercise
of that mastication of rich meats which, together with the gift
of speech, raises man above the beasts of the field---- That was
what tortured George.
He had devoted the day to thinking out a solution of the problem.
Such was the overflowing goodness of Aline's heart that not even
he could persuade her to withdraw her moral support from her
father and devote herself to keeping up her strength as she
should do. It was necessary to think of some other plan.
And then a speech of hers had come back to him. She had
said--poor child:
"I do get a little hungry sometimes--late at night generally."
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