CHAPTER XII
CHESTER HUNT'S NEW MAID
"Nobody home!" was Josie's disappointed verdict after she had waited a few minutes and there was no response to her ring. She rang again, this time with sharp decision. She heard the opening of a door upstairs and then the lower hall was flooded with light and a sound of quick, light footsteps on the stairs and the front door was jerked open somewhat impatiently. Josie looked stolidly into the handsome countenance of Chester Hunt.
"Well, what is it?" he asked brusquely, taking in with some amusement the awkward little figure before him.
"I bane come to work for you."
"Oh! In answer to my ad?"
"Sure!"
"What can you do?"
"Anything with my hands but I bane not much good on head work."
"Can you clean a house and serve a meal?"
"Yah!"
"Perhaps you can cook too!"
"I can cuke some."
"What nationality are you?"
"I bane Luther."
"German?" smiling.
"Naw! I bane Swede," and Josie permitted an expression of disgust to flit over her otherwise blank countenance.
"Well, when can you go to work?"
"How much you bane pay?"
"Of course! How stupid of me! What do you ask?"
"I ask twelve dollar a week for cuking and ten dollar a week for claneuping but I bane get less than I ask. If I do cuking and claneuping both together I ask fifteen dollar a week but I bane come to you and see how you suit me for twelve. I bane a bum at telegraphing."
"You mean telephoning?"
"Yah, telephoning, but I bane willing to learn. Have you bane keeping other help?"
"I try to but they have all left me lately. Would you work with colored people?"
"You bane meaning blacks? I do not love them but if you try me you find I do twice three time as much work as blacks."
"And your name?"
"Miss Josie Larson!"
"All right, Miss Josie Larson, suppose you come in the morning and go to work."
"I bane come tomorrow night and cuke the dinner. I got other business on hand for morning."
"Well, I'm sorry, but I fancy I can get along without you for twelve hours longer. Now, mind you, come in time. I have dinner at seven."
"I bane coming at five. Do you to market go yourself?"
"I'll have provisions in the house ready for you. After tomorrow you will have to do the housekeeping as well as cooking. If I have a friend in to dinner could you serve two of us?"
"Sure! I bane smart enough to serve eight if you have knives and forks to go round."
Josie made a stiff bow and backed awkwardly down the steps. When the door was closed she turned quickly and literally ran back to the Elberta Inn. She got safely to her room without being seen by any of the aristocratic boarders.
Alice Chisholm was waiting for her.
"Well, how about it?"
"Got my job as chief cook and bottle washer with the handsome Chester Hunt and will cook dinner for him tomorrow evening. In the meantime I have some work ahead of me. What I would have done without you, Alice, I do not see. I should have been forced to double-cross my boss, and I'd have hated it. My father always preached being faithful in small things."
The next day was a busy one for Josie as well as Alice Chisholm. Josie must lay in a supply of maid's uniforms, aprons and caps. She must write letters to Mary Louise and her partners of the Higgledy-Piggledy, also a business epistle to her boss of the household necessities and jeweled novelties. A cook book must be purchased of the latest and most approved recipes, Josie having mastered only a few of the simpler dishes, but she had always declared that the keynote to cookery was gumption and with a good recipe and plenty of that ingredient she could master even anything as intricate as angel's food.
"I can make biscuit and coffee and waffles and scrambled eggs and tea and cinnamon toast, too. I know so many ways to please an arch-villain," she said to Alice.
"And I know how to make batter bread and jelly roll. I am certainly coming to see you some time and show you my stunts," said Alice.
"Fine but you will have to be a Swede. I didn't ask my new employer about company but I guess he won't object, just so I give him something fit to eat and clean up his house."
Alice Chisholm took over the business of getting canvassers and planning the work with such efficiency that Josie was delighted. "I never could have done it so well. I know the boss will thank his stars that I had to go cook for Chester Hunt and was forced to employ a so-called assistant."
"I am quite crazy about it," said Alice. "I always loved organizing and bossing and it so happens I am always the one to be organized and directed. Now, my talents have full scope. I am going to canvass some myself and I tell you I am going to show some of these women how to work."
At five o'clock, sharp, Josie was installed in the kitchen of the old Waller house.
"You will find the raw materials in the refrigerator. I am to have a gentleman to dine with me. Dinner at seven." Chester Hunt's tone was one of command and his manner not an agreeable one. Josie could well understand that the girls in the business world did not find him so agreeable as the society girls.
"All right, sir! I bane on time. Must I cuke everything I find in the refrigerator?"
"Heavens, no! Just get up a good dinner. If you don't know how you better say so and get out before you start."
"I bane asking, but if you don't want me to ask I bane smart enough to yump in."
"All right then 'yump in,'" he said, laughing in spite of being in a decidedly bad temper.
Josie "yumped in" with a will. By the process of selection from what she found in the pantry and refrigerator she concocted a good dinner and had it on the table at seven o'clock. This was something of a feat, because every cooking utensil had to be scoured before she could use it and even the china and silver was not fit to put on the table without a thorough washing.
"My, I wish I had Elizabeth Wright's mother here!" Josie said to herself. "Wouldn't she have the time of her life getting this place cleaned up?"
The drop-leaf mahogany table in the beautiful old dining room looked very inviting when Josie informed the master:
"Dinner bane served up, sir!"
A low bowl of violets and early hyacinths that the new maid had found blooming in the back yard were reflected in the polished surface of the mahogany. The table must perforce be bare as all the tablecloths in the house were soiled. She had found some lacy mats which she had washed and ironed hurriedly. The silver and glass were polished to the nth degree. The master looked his approval and actually smiled at the clever maid but Josie's eyes were dull and fishy and on her face nothing was expressed but dense stupidity. She proceeded to serve the dinner with meticulous care, thankful for the training she had had at the Higgledy-Piggledy tea room. Not one false move did she make in her service, but not once did she allow a gleam of intelligence to flicker across her countenance.
"Where did you make your find?" asked the guest, who turned out to be Braxton Denton, Miss Oleander's horse-racing brother, a middle-aged man with a flashy cravat and a crooked mouth.
"She found me. She seems to be a good enough servant considering she is so marvelously stupid."
Josie overheard the conversation as she removed the soup plates. In the pantry she permitted herself the luxury of a grin and after she slid the broiled pompano from the grill to the fish plates she let off more steam by a pirouette that a premiere danseuse might have envied.
Silently and efficiently she served the whole meal, managing to efface herself so utterly that the two men talked as freely as though they had been alone in the dining room.
"Gloomy old house!" said Braxton Denton. "I wonder you hang on here."
"It has been my home ever since I was a boy and I am more comfortable here than I would be at a hotel. I am very fond of this place. The property would run down terribly, too, if I let it stand vacant. It is only gloomy because I can't get anyone to keep it in order. The servants have all left and I don't seem to be able to get any more—not until this girl came last night. How long she will stick I can't tell."
"Until I find out what I want to know," muttered Josie to the empty fish plates as she bore them off.
"How is your sister-in-law getting?"
"No better," with a heavy sadness in his tone. "I am afraid the case is a hopeless one. I get daily reports from the sanitarium and they are most discouraging."
"And the children?"
"Oh, they are in excellent hands, both of them well. They never ask for their mother, however, nor does she ask for them. It is a strange case—one almost of antagonism. They have shown the strangest lack of feeling in regard to their mother and she seems really to hate them. I can hardly blame her because while they are only little children their callousness is positively diabolical."
Josie permitted herself the slight revenge of sprinkling a little extra pepper on her master's English mutton chop.
"Very imprudent of me, but I hope he will sneeze his handsome nose off," she said, giving the pepper box another shake.
She had her wish. His handsome nose didn't exactly come off but it was not for lack of sneezing.
"Kerchoo! Kerchoo!" he gasped for breath, choking and sneezing at the same time.
"Heavens, girl!" he finally sputtered. "How much pepper do you usually put on chops?"
"Mine is fine," ventured his guest.
"Excuse, please," and Josie gave a stiff curtsy. "My foot slipped and I bane put more pepper than I meant."
His feelings were soothed by a caramel pie. After dinner he came to the pantry door and called the new maid to him.
"You have done very well, all but over seasoning the chops."
"The chop!" corrected Josie.
"I think you will be able to do the work. I want breakfast at eight. You must look after my mail carefully. Most of my mail comes to my residence. I shall expect you to do the marketing and not bother me with details of housekeeping. Do you need any assistance with the cleaning? I fancy everything is pretty dirty."
"Filthy!" ejaculated Josie, "but I bane strong."
"All right! You understand about looking after my mail carefully, do you not?"
"Yah! I yoost put it on the desk. I bane take care."
How much care she did not think it advisable to tell him, but his mail was one of the things to which Josie was determined to give much attention.