Aunt Rose, sensing that silence was indeed a blessing devoted herself to three helpings of whatever it was on the plate and went upstairs to unlace her corset.
"Grandma," said Aunt Rose, down again. "Oh, what a kitchen you keep. It's really a mess, now, you must admit. Bottles and dishes and boxes all over, the labels off most everything, so how do you tell what you're using? I'd feel guilty if you didn't let me help you set things to rights while I'm visiting here. Let me roll up my sleeves."
"No, thank you very much," said Grandma.
Douglas heard them through the library walls and his heart thumped.
"It's like a Turkish bath in here," said Aunt Rose. "Let's have some windows open, roll up those shades so we can see what we're doing."
"Light hurts my eyes," said Grandma.
"I got the broom, I'll wash the dishes and stack them away neat. I got to help, now don't say a word."
"Go sit down," said Grandma.
"Why, Grandma, think how it'd help your cooking. You're a wonderful cook, it's true, but if you're this good in all this chaos--pure chaos--why, think how fine you'd be, once things were put where you could lay hands on them."
"I never thought of that...." said Grandma.
"Think on it, then. Say, for instance, modern kitchen methods helped you improve your cooking just ten or fifteen per cent. Your menfolk are already pure animal at the table. This time next week they'll be dying like flies from overeating. Food so pretty and fine they won't be able to stop the knife and fork."
"You really think so?" said Grandma, beginning to be interested.
"Grandma, don't give in!" whispered Douglas to the library wall.
But to his horror he heard them sweeping and dusting, throwing out half-empty sacks, pasting new labels on cans, putting dishes and pots and pans in drawers that had stood empty for years. Even the knives, which had lain like a catch of silvery fish on the kitchen tables, were dumped into boxes.
Grandfather had been listening behind Douglas for a full five minutes. Somewhat uneasily he scratched his chin. "Now that I think of it, that kitchen's been a mess right on down the line. Things need a little arrangement, no doubt. And if what Aunt Rose claims is true, Doug boy, it'll be a rare experience at supper tomorrow night."
"Yes, sir," said Douglas. "A rare experience."
"What's that?" asked Grandma.
Aunt Rose took a wrapped gift from behind her back.
Grandma opened it.
"A cookbook!" she cried. She let it drop on the table. "I don't need one of those! A handful of this, a pinch of that, a thimbleful of something else is all I ever use--"
"I'll help you market," said Aunt Rose. "And while we're at it, I been noticing your glasses, Grandma. You mean to say you been going around all these years peering through spectacles like those, with chipped lenses, all kind of bent? How do you see your way around without falling flat in the flour bin? We're taking you right down for new glasses."
And off they marched, Grandma bewildered, on Rose's elbow, into the summer afternoon.
They returned with groceries, new glasses, and a hairdo for Grandma. Grandma looked as if she had been chased around town. She gasped as Rose helped her into the house.
"There you are, Grandma. Now you got everything where you can find it. Now you can see!"
"Come on, Doug," said Grandfather. "Let's take a walk around the block and work up an appetite. This is going to be a night in history. One of the best darned suppers ever served, or I'll eat my vest."
Suppertime.
Smiling people stopped smiling. Douglas chewed one bit of food for three minutes, and then, pretending to wipe his mouth, lumped it in his napkin. He saw Tom and Dad do the same. People swashed the food together, making roads and patterns, drawing pictures in the gravy, forming castles of the potatoes, secretly passing meat chunks to the dog.
Grandfather excused himself early. "I'm full," he said.
All the boarders were pale and silent.
Grandma poked her own plate nervously.