Page:Delight - de la Roche - 1926.djvu/39

 of loaf sugar from the silver bowl. She laid it on her tapering tongue, then closed her lips and sucked like a happy child. Annie opened the door and said—"You'd have time for a bite of breakfast now before the troupe comes down. You can look after them. You've done real well."

"Just chuck those sausages into the stock-pot," said the cook to Delight. "Every bit helps. Then come and get your breakfast while you've time."

"Yes, cook," replied Delight meekly, sliding the two left-over sausages into the simmering beaded liquid.

Mrs. Bye was a tall, thin, unbelievably active woman of forty. She had a hatchet face, prominent bright blue eyes, a large nose, and a chin that receded slightly. She had long ago lost a front tooth, and its fellow, moving gradually forward to fill the space, now occupied the centre of her jaw, projecting slightly and giving her face the expression of a very eager squirrel. Her natural pallor was changed for the flush that always came to her cheeks at meal-time, for she was excitable, anxious and fearful of Mrs. Jessop whom she fancied was not friendly towards her.

The kitchen was terribly hot, the stove-lids pinkish from the coals that Charley had heaped beneath them. The girls were all talking at once, old Davy and Charley were dragging their chairs noisily across the bare floor, and Queenie, the Byes' only child, was marching up and down the length of the kitchen singing her newest kindergarten song at the top of her lungs. She was nearly six years old and had inherited Charley's classic regularity of feature, his fair, almost transparent skin, and his clumsy body. But nature had withheld from her the proper