Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/77

Rh and with an adorable gesture of smiling young wisdom, she dropped her hands and turned from him, to the stove.

He began to pace up and down the room. "And you had the promise of being— Nothing but a little training to make you— Why, damn it all, common sense—ordinary common sense," he cried to her indifferent back. "I thought you had that anyway."

She said, over her shoulder, as she broke an egg and drained off the white into a bowl: "I can't cook with you stamping around—if I did act with it."

"Cook!" he fumed. "Cook! There are millions of women to cook. You 're an actress."

"Oh, I 'm learning," she said. "I can do a foamy omelet. I 'm doing one now, if you 'll be quiet a moment."

He folded his arms in the final calm of exasperation. "Who is he? Where is he?"

"He 's a newspaperman." She broke another egg. "He commutes—to Findley—and walks here over the hill." She applied herself to a Dover beater. "He gets home at four in the afternoon, and leaves at six in the morning."

"Good heavens! A commuter! A suburbanite! In New Jersey! What else? Poor, I suppose."

She was consulting her cook-book. "Twenty-five dollars a week. 'One tablespoonful of butter. One—'"

"Are you living on twenty-five dollars a week?"

"Yes. Now please don't bother me," she said.