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Rh know how to make the best cake you ever tasted in your life."

That's the way it came about. I took her out into the kitchen and didn't try to cover up a thing. She could see everything exactly as it was—smoked kitchen ceiling, uneven kitchen floor, paintless pantry shelves. She could go to the bottom of the flour barrel if she wanted to; and she did. Covered with an old apron and her sleeves rolled up, she was first in the kitchen pantry looking into every cupboard, drawer or bucket for powdered sugar; next in the fruit-closet feeling all the paper bags, in search of a lemon; then calling to me in her musical voice to come here and taste some dough to see if it needed anything else; in the butler's pantry choosing just the plate she wanted for her cookies; and actually underneath the sink, pulling out a greasy spider for panouchie, which she was going to make out of some lumpy brown sugar she discovered in a wooden bucket. I took grim pleasure in having her see the worst there was. I wondered if she could stand the fact that we didn't own an ice-cream freezer, when she suggested ice-cream for dessert, nor possess a drop of olive oil for her mayonnaise. I didn't care. I liked telling her the things we didn't have. When I heard her burst into laughter in the butler's pantry, and pushing open the swinging-door, saw her gazing at my set of rules tacked up over the sink for Nellie, I made no explanation whatsoever. I was delighted to have her read them. At sight of me she went off into regular peals.

Finally she gasped, with her finger on Rule 6,