Page:Middle Aged Love Stories (IA middleagedlove00bacorich).djvu/279

 A housemaid advanced to the table, bearing in both red hands a long tray covered with a napkin. On the napkin lay, heaped in rich confusion, a great pile of spicy, smoking brown cookies.

“They’re just out o’ the oven,” she began, but Varian could contain himself no longer. He could not be deceived: he would have known those cookies in the Desert of Sahara. He crossed the little plot in three long steps, and faced the astonished maid.

“I beg your pardon,” he said firmly, “but it is very necessary that I should have one of those cookies! I hope you can spare one?”

She giggled convulsively.

“I—I guess you can, sir,” she murmured, laying down the tray and retreating toward the house door.

Varian faced the older woman, and, with hat still in hand, instinctively bowed lower; for this was no housekeeper—he was sure of that. Even as she met his