Page:Emma Speed Sampson--The shorn lamb.djvu/85

Rh more to him than anything since his little Tom was born. Testy knew Major Taylor's roughness and his kindness, his hard spots and his soft spots. She had not cooked at Mill House for thirty years for nothing. She had been introduced into the mysteries of the master's kitchen when she was twenty years old, Aunt Old Testament being in charge, and now she was a middle-aged woman and her mother was dead and the master an old man. Tom, Myra, and Evelyn had been little children when she had come, a shy, slim, brown girl, to learn the art of cooking under her mother. She had been with the family when the wife and mother had died, and later on when Tom had gone off to study painting in New York, thereby infuriating his father to such an extent that he had returned his son's letters unopened. She was with them when the terrible news of Tom's death was read out by one of his sisters from a New York paper. She had watched her master grow harder and more bitter as the years rolled by; had realized his disappointment in his children, his loneliness and lack of companionship.

Now this child had come and she might help matters somewhat if only the ladies of the house and the young master would be pleasant. Testy knew quite well that when it came to a test the