Page:Leah Reed--Brenda's summer at Rockley.djvu/97

Rh “Well, that depends. If it’s anything I particularly like, I eat more, and if I don’t like it, I eat less. But then I’m on pretty good terms with the cook, and, generally, she takes care to have the things that I like. I’m afraid, though, that I should have fared badly to-day,  because I sent off a firecracker, almost under the nose of her pet cat,—my! you should have seen him jump,—and I’m of the opinion that I should have had little or nothing to eat to-day had I stayed at home. My! but everything here does taste good.”

“Yes, Amy is growing to be a pretty fair cook. She roasted this lamb yesterday so that we might have it cold to-day; and she cooked the vegetables to-day; and this  sponge cake is some of her work; and—”

“There, mother, Fritz would have enjoyed his dinner better if he had thought that you were the artist who had  prepared it all.”

Fritz was placed in an embarrassing position. He did not know exactly what to say, nor how to decide between  his two friends. For to say that he preferred things as they were, might seem to make him, in some way, imply  that Mrs. Redmond might have done better; or to say  that he was perfectly satisfied with things as they were,  might sound as if he doubted Mrs. Redmond’s power to  do better. Very wisely, therefore, he said nothing,—nothing further, at least, on the subject of the dinner.

For so young a girl, however, Amy had a rather unusual knowledge of cooking and housekeeping matters. Ten years earlier her father had been a rising young