Page:Arthur Stringer-The Loom of Destiny.djvu/103

The Crucible of Character poured on it from the kettle, to make gravy, had always been a sound he took special pleasure in, and sometimes he even had the good luck to see the live crabs meet their sickening yet fascinating death by scalding. Sometimes, too, he used to get the dish with the sugar frosting to scrape out. Sugar frosting, he remembered, was delicious!

But Nora, the new cook, was so different! She was very cross, and said the kitchen was no place "fur childer." Her Irish arms were red and big and strong, and her shoulders were broad, and she had a way of slamming to the oven door that always made Russell very much afraid of her. Her mere firm stride and the quick, war-like way in which she would approach and retreat from the hot range with one red arm guarding her face, soon made Russell afraid of her, even before she had felt enough at home in her new place to tell him in so many words that he had no business to an occasional handful of raisins out of her colander.

His mother herself now entered that throne-room of domesticity with a certain 91