CHAPTER XXVII

A KITCHEN COURTSHIP

For the rest of the morning, turning steadily away at that wheel, I found myself wondering rather wistfully how things were going in there.

In spirit I saw the whole setting for this love-scene. Mrs. Price's back-kitchen with the big table, where she "put up" the dough for baking, set under the latticed window. The huge, hive-shaped "batch-oven" where I myself had helped with the baking last week. That oven had to be heated, early, by filling it with a stack of brushwood (some quite big boughs), setting the stack on fire, and leaving it so until the wood was powdery-ash, and the bricks of the domed oven-roof were white-hot. Then in went the loaves which Mrs. Price's tiny expert hands had shown us how to knead and to put up!

They--Mrs. Price and Elizabeth--had reached this stage of the morning's work by the time Colonel Fielding made his appearance in search of the girl he'd decided to marry.

What happened I heard something of later. (Not all.) Partly from Elizabeth, partly from him.

An odd courtship; so entirely War-time and modern! Yet going back hundreds of years; for what could be more old-fashioned than for the young man to seek his love among the warmth and the fragrance and the homely domesticity of the kitchen on baking-day! There was little Mrs. Price in her crisp grey overall with an old ivory brooch at her throat, busy and brisk and looking with every inch of herself "a Lady" in every sense, including that of the original Saxon "Loaf-ward." There was my chum Elizabeth helping her. With her hat off and her short thick hair rumpled about her small flushed face I expect she looked like a rather defiantly conscientious cherub!

To them, enter Colonel Fielding (with his blush!) telling Mrs. Price (with his usual shy charm of manner!) that he thought he'd like to come and help her, since he understood she'd got a busy day on.

Mrs. Price, demurely: "It will be a wonder if the farm doesn't prosper this year, considering the amount of help we are getting from the Army! It's very good of you, I'm sure. The bread is all into the tins now, Elizabeth? That's right; perhaps the Colonel will help you put them into the oven with this."

She gave him the immensely long-handled oven-shovel. On this Elizabeth set loaf after loaf in the tins, and he shoved one after another into the farther part of the hot oven.

Then Mrs. Price turned to get water from the pump which is set just over the spring in the scullery, and then she bustled away on one of the thousand odd jobs that await the farmer's women-folk at every turn. Or did she do it on purpose to leave those two together, working in the cosy, fragrant place?

For some minutes they were silent as a couple of working ants. Not a sound but the scraping of that shovel against the oven-floor!

Then he began, very gently, "D'you know who I feel sorry for?"

"No," from Elizabeth, setting her last tin loaf on the shovel. "Who?"

"Er ... People who have to get engaged in town," was his unexpected reply. "Such a beastly rush. All mixed up with--er--taxis, and catching trains and crowds of people in restaurants all watching you! Having to go to the theatre.... And then the lights going up, or the curtain. And people all hissing 'Ssh!' when you want to talk to the girl. Everybody jostling you. Not a bit of peace, you know. No room! No--er--time to say anything or feel anything. Don't you know?"

I can picture the Man-hater suppressing her happy little fluster at this; taking up the fruit tarts that had to go in in front of the oven, after the loaves.

Colonel Fielding's shy but deliberate voice went on: "I think one's--er--courtship ought to come in pleasant places. Where there's quiet. And nice things about. And jolly things to do. Making hay. Or ... bread. Don't you think so?"

Of course she thought so. The fields, the farm; any girl might envy Elizabeth the scenes that set first love for her, without hurry, without artificiality or fatigue! But I expect Elizabeth only flushed deeper and deeper pink, half with emotion, half with the heat of that oven. Little bright beads of moisture had gathered about her forehead and neck; annoyed, she brushed them away with the sleeve of her overall, hoping that he did not see.

As if anything she did would escape him now!

He moved from the oven and said thoughtfully: "I wish I could remember that quotation properly."

"A quotation?"

"Yes, something I read about the sweetest sight in the world being that of a woman baking bread, and how, even if it were in the--er--sweat of her brow, what man was there '_who would not rather kiss those drops away, than the powder from the cheek of a Duchess'?_"

Having arrived at this stage of the story as told me by Elizabeth herself, I said to her: "And immediately after this, I suppose, the young man proposed to you?"

Elizabeth then told me: "He didn't propose at all."

"What?" I cried.

"He didn't propose," repeated the Man-hater obstinately. "I did."

"You?"

"I had to," explained my little chum, glowing. "He made me."

"What can you mean, 'made' you?"

Elizabeth explained how "that quotation" had made her so embarrassed (being quite unused to these remarks from men) that she hadn't known what to say and had practically snapped the young man's head off.

She told him sharply: "The bottled currants have got to go into the oven when the bread comes out. You might help to fetch them and their tin trays out of the scullery, instead of just standing there talking."

At that Colonel Fielding seemed positively to wither away where he stood. He looked suddenly miserable (according to Elizabeth). He said in the most unhappy voice: "Have I--er--put my foot into it again? I suppose I must have, somehow. You're angry with me, Miss Weare. I'll go."

Elizabeth begged him not to go (I don't suppose the creature had made a movement to the door), and said she wasn't in the least angry, why should she be?

The young Colonel then adopted a truly pathetic tone (I could hear it!) about his being "very unfortunate with women, who always had a down on him. Yes! They thought he was like a barber's block, and hated him. All of 'em!"

I could imagine his sidewards tilt of the head as he told the tale to Elizabeth, the boyishly-sincere.

She, blurting out "_I_ don't hate you!" hurried into the scullery for a couple of those tall glass jars of fruit for bottling. He followed her, carrying more fruit and murmuring that no girl could be got to care for him; not really care!

Elizabeth said he looked more than ever like that picture "The Falconer" on her chocolate-box lid. I can imagine her adoring glance up at him!

This was in the kitchen, again in front of the oven. He had taken hold with both hands of the tray that she still held.

"I shouldn't believe it," the young villain told her, gazing into her flushed face. "Not unless I heard it out of a girl's own mouth! Not unless she cared enough to say so first!"

Here Elizabeth broke off the story with a defiant "So you see!"

"What did you _say_?" I urged.

Neither of them would ever tell me. However! Before kind Mrs. Price returned (to see they did not repeat that old story of Alfred and the Cakes!) Elizabeth had said whatever it was.

In this proposal-scene she, the girl, had been forced to take the initiative.

That went against all my instincts; I couldn't have done that. How human beings vary! For she, strange little thing, simply loved being made to "make the running." This I didn't understand.

"_He_ understood. _He's_ not like that great hulking brute you prophesied for me, the one who would trample on me with policemen's seventeens! _You_ thought I would be 'tamed' by somebody bullying me. _That's_ not what happens to a girl like me; that's all wrong psychology," babbled my chum exultantly, while I realized that the last phrase at least must have come from him. "It's only the frilly, helpless, overfeminized weepers that admire these huge, bullying navvies with ugly faces and muscles like vegetable marrows! I'd have been safe from _them_ for ever! But he's so wonderful! _He's_ not a usual young man----"

"And you're not a usual girl," I told her affectionately. "My dears! There is only one thing to be said: _you certainly have found each other!_"