Page:Delight - de la Roche - 1926.djvu/134

 what he so little understood and by their airs of aggressive competence.

However today he felt rather more hopeful. Bastien's accounts were more satisfactory. He was trying to economize. The dining-room trade was looking up wonderfully. A good dinner, tables well filled, and what a waitress! She made a man blink, positively. He doubted whether Mrs. Jessop should have taken on so beautiful a creature. It disturbed him to think of her in a hotel among a lot of rough fellows.

He stood blinking in the kitchen now, near the fiery range, the women and Charley in a deferential semi-circle about him, Bastien at his back.

Bastien said: "This is Mrs. Bye, the cook. She's had a little sick spell but she'll be all right in a day or so. Mrs. Jessop's been helping her out with the cooking."

Mrs. Jessop grinned. Mrs. Bye had risen. Some superhuman force seemed to have given power to those shaking legs of hers. Red patches flared in her cheeks. But there was something in her eyes that held Mr. Hodgins. He looked into them and thought: "Poor woman. A nice woman."

Queenie, pressing forward, put the wand of pussy-willow into his hand.

"Po woo," she said.

"What's that?" he asked. "What does she say?"

"She says it's for you," Mrs. Bye answered, shaking all over.

"Po woo," shouted Queenie, joggling his watch-chain.

"Good little girl," he replied. "Here's ten cents for you."

He kissed the child, chatted pleasantly to the women for a moment, and then retreated, carrying the willow wand.

A pleasant man, the women agreed. Everything had