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'T was before day I heard her at the stove, and I smelt a baking that made me want to go find it, and when I come out in the kitchen she 'd the table covered with her cakeens, large and small. 'What's all this whillalu, me topknot-hin? says I. 'Ate that, says she, and hopped back to the oven-door.
The wind that drove the myriads upon myriads of tiny sand grains now darkening the air, was ardent as the blast from an opened oven-door. "Get your saddles off, quick! Lie down, and put your heads under 'em," ordered the cow-puncher, briskly swinging himself out of his saddle as he spoke. The others hastened to follow his example. It was not a minute too soon.
Instead, the cavernous, whitewashed room was full of fog, but she noticed that, though the shutters were bolted and barred as she had left them, the windows behind them had been widely opened to the air. She had left them shut. Making a "spill" out of a twist of newspaper she had been taught the art as a girl by one of her old mistresses she stooped and flung open the oven-door of her gas-stove.
'You'll have to go if it breaks all the horses' legs in the county, said the cook, turning from the spectacle, knocking open the oven-door with the tongs, glancing critically in, and slamming it together with a clang. 'O, O; why shall I? asked the coachman, including in his auditory by a glance the clerk and gardener who had just entered. 'Because Mr. Manston is in the business.
Jove! the best that was baked at the Queen's to-day, and straight from the oven-door! The thing is done huff, puff, and away we go! But come on this needs telling to the rest."
Harry happened to be with her, and she sent him to the door to see who it was. 'It is Tom Fool, he said, returning. 'He begs speech of you, madam with a face as long as the baker's shovel, and a mouth as wide as an oven-door. With their Irish stepmother the children took far greater freedoms than would have been permitted them by the jealous care of their own mother over their manners.
His teeth chattered and he crouched down on his knees before the open oven-door. "I'm cold," he complained. Mrs. Brenner came close to him and laid her hand on his wet, matted hair. "Tobey's a bad boy," she scolded. "You mustn't go out in the wet like this. Your hair's soaked." She got down stiffly on her lame knees. "Sit down," she ordered, "and I'll take off your shoes.
'Oh, I'm all right, she said; and she turned away from him to the fire, opening the oven-door to see whether the meat-pie was done. 'How have you kept in this weather? he said, watching her. 'I'd no notion you'd had it so bad. 'Oh, I don't know. I suppose I've had a chill or something. It's been rather weariful. 'You didn't tell me anything about your chill.
Fleda saw all this, as it were, without seeing it; she stood still as a mouse and breathless, till her aunt turned, and then a spring and a half shout of joy, and she had clasped her in her arms, and was crying with her whole heart. Aunt Miriam was taken all aback she could do nothing but sit down and cry too, and forgot her oven-door."
Peggy is surprised to find how difficult it is to combine dinner-getting with baby-tending. When she opens the oven-door, there is Minna's head thrust up under her arm, the inquisitive little nose in great danger by reason of sputtering gravy.
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