The Camp Fire Girls Solve a Mystery; Or, The Christmas Adventure at Carver House
ordered them out. Justice calmly took her apron and cap away from her and
announced that _he_ was going to be Chief Cook. Tying the apron around
him wrong side out, and setting the cap backward on his head, he held the
spoon aloft like a Roman short-sword, and striking an attitude in
imitation of Spartacus addressing the Gladiators, he declaimed feelingly:
"Ye call me _Chef_, and ye do well to call him _Chef_
Who for seven long years has camped in summertime,
And made his coffee out of rain when there was no spring water handy,
And mixed his biscuits in the wash-basin,
Because the baking-pan no longer was.
But I was not always thus, an unhired butcher,
A savage _Chef_ of still more savage menus----"
The teakettle suddenly boiled over with a loud hissing and sizzling, and
the impassioned orator jumped as though he had been shot; then,
collecting himself, he rushed over and picked the kettle from the stove
and stood holding it in his hand, uncertain what to do with it.
"Set it down on the back of the stove!" commanded Migwan. "A great cook
you are! Even Slim would know enough to do that!"
"Thanks for the implied compliment," said Slim stiffly.
"Slim ought to be Chief Cook," said the Captain. "He's fat. Chief cooks
are always fat."
"Right you are!" cried Justice, taking off the apron and tying it around
Slim as far as it would go.
"But I can't cook!" protested Slim.
"That doesn't make any difference," replied Justice. "You look the part,
and that's all that's needed. Looks are everything, these days."
He perched the cap rakishly on top of Slim's head and stood off a little
distance to eye the effect critically.
"Nobody could tell the difference between you and the Chef of the
Waldorf," was his verdict.
Indeed, Slim, with his full moon face shining out under the cap, and the
apron tied around his extensive waistline, looked just like the pictured
cooks in the spaghetti advertisements.
"Isn't he the perfect Chef, though?" continued Justice admiringly. "He
must have been born with an iron spoon in his hand, instead of a gold one
in his mouth." Then, turning to Slim and bowing low before him, he
chanted solemnly, "Go forth, go forth, Lars Porsena, go forth, beloved of
heaven! All the other cooks will drown themselves in their soup kettles
in despair when they see you coming. All hail the Chief Cook!"
"But I can't cook!" repeated Slim helplessly.
"You don't have to," Justice reassured him. "Chief Cooks don't have to
cook; they just direct the others. Behold, we stand ready to obey your
lightest command."
"All right," said Slim, "suppose you pare the potatoes."
"Ask me anything but that!" Justice begged him. "I never get the eyes cut
out, and then when they're on my plate they look up at me reproachfully,
like this----"
Justice screwed up his face and rolled his eyes into a grimace that
convulsed the girls.
"No, you pare the potatoes, Slim," he continued. "The Chief Cook always
pares the potatoes himself. It's too delicate a job to entrust to a
subordinate."
Slim had his mouth open to protest, and Sahwah and Katherine, who had
just wandered out into the kitchen, were in a gale of merriment over
Slim's costume, when the doorbell rang and a messengerboy passed in a
telegram.
They all pressed around eagerly while Katherine read it. It was from
Sherry:
"South America boat sailed yesterday. Dr. Phillips gone. Can get no
clue. Coming home to-night."
A long, tragic "Oh-h-h!" from Hinpoha broke the stricken silence which
had fallen on the group at the reading of the message.
"Tough luck," said the Captain feelingly, and Justice repeated, "Tough
luck," like an echo.
The Winnebagos glanced uncertainly toward the stairway and looked at each
other inquiringly.
"Somebody go up and call Nyoda," said Katherine.
Just at that moment the door of Sylvia's room opened and Nyoda came
running downstairs with light, swift footsteps, her face wreathed in
smiles.
"Sylvia's better," she called, before she was halfway down. "The fever
left her while she was sleeping, and her temperature is normal. The
danger of pneumonia is over. I'm so relieved." She skipped down the last
of the stairs like a young girl.
Then she caught sight of the telegram in Katherine's hand, and sensed the
atmosphere of depression that prevailed in the lower hall. She knew the
truth before a word was spoken, and composed herself to meet it.
"They were too late?" she said quietly, as she joined the group, and held
out her hand for the bit of yellow paper.
"Poor Sylvia!" she exclaimed huskily. "She would soon be well enough to
hear the news--and now there is nothing to tell her. If we had only found
that letter a day sooner!"
CHAPTER XVIII
KATHERINE GOES TO THE CITY
"Does anyone want to go in to the city this afternoon?" asked Nyoda, as
they rose from luncheon. It had been a rather silent, dispirited meal,
and quickly gotten over with. "I had planned to go in and take a few
things to Mrs. Deane to-day, but now it will be impossible for me to get
away. Sylvia has been fretting about her aunt and I think someone ought
to go."
"I'll go," said Katherine readily, her spirits rising at this prospect of
action. The suspense of the morning, ending in such a disappointment, had
begun to react upon her in a fit of the blues. Sahwah and Hinpoha, with
Slim and the Captain, had planned during luncheon to go roller-skating
that afternoon, but as Katherine could not roller-skate the plan held no
attraction for her. Justice had promised Sherry that he would go over the
lighting system on his car while he was away and was planning to spend
the whole afternoon in the garage; Migwan was going to sit with Sylvia to
give Nyoda a chance to rest; and Gladys had a sore throat which made her
disinclined to talk. Taking it by and large, Katherine had anticipated a
rather dismal afternoon, a prospect which was pleasantly altered by
Nyoda's request.
"You can make the two o'clock train if you start immediately," continued
Nyoda, "and the five-fifteen will bring you back in time for dinner. I
have the things for Mrs. Deane all ready."
Katherine rose with alacrity and put on her hat and coat. "Any errands
while I am in town?" she asked, hunting for her umbrella in the stair
closet.
"None that I can think of," replied Nyoda, after wrinkling her brow for a
moment, "unless you want to stop at the jeweller's and get my watch. It's
been there for several weeks, being regulated."
"All right," said Katherine, writing down the name of the jeweller in her
memorandum book. "You'll notice I'm not trusting my memory this time,"
she remarked laughingly.
"I'll take the five-fifteen train back," she called over her shoulder as
she went out of the front door.
"Be careful how you hold that package!" Nyoda called warningly after her.
"There's a glass of jelly in it that'll upset!"
Gingerly holding the package by the string, Katherine picked her way
through the rapidly widening puddles on the sidewalks to the station. By
some miracle of good luck the package was still right side up when she
arrived at the hospital, and she breathed an audible sigh of relief when
it was at last safely out of her hands.
She found Mrs. Deane a frail, kindly-faced woman, bearing her discomfort
cheerfully, but, nevertheless, lonesome in this strange hospital ward and
very grateful for any attention shown her. Katherine began, as she
described it, to "express her sympathy quietly and in a ladylike manner,"
and ended up by delivering her famous "Wimmen's Rights" speech for the
benefit of the whole ward. She finally escaped, after her sixth encore,
and fetched up breathless on the sidewalk, only to discover that she had
left her umbrella behind, and before she retrieved it she had to give her
speech all over again, for the benefit of an old lady who had been asleep
during the first performance.
There still being three-quarters of an hour before train time after she
had called at the jewellers for Nyoda's watch, Katherine dropped into a
smart little tea-room to while away the intervening moments with a cup of
tea and a dish of her favorite shrimp salad. As she nibbled leisurely at
a dainty round of brown bread and idly watched the throngs coming and
going at the tables around her, a shrill cry of delight suddenly rang out
above the hum of voices and the clatter of dishes.
"Katherine! Katherine Adams!"
Katherine looked up to see an animated little figure in a beaver coat and
fur hat coming toward her through the crowd.
"Katherine Adams!" repeated the voice, "don't you know me?"
"Why--Veronica! Veronica Lehar!" gasped Katherine in amazement. "What are
you doing here? I thought you were in New York." She caught the little
brown-gloved hands in her own big ones and squeezed them until Veronica
winced.
"Katherine! Dear old K! How I've missed you!" Veronica cried rapturously,
and drawing her hands from Katherine's grip she flung her arms
impulsively around her neck, regardless of the curious stares of the
onlookers.
"Let them stare!" she murmured stoutly, seeing Katherine's face flush
with embarrassment as she encountered the quizzical gaze of a keen-eyed
young man at the next table. "If they hadn't seen their beloved K for
nearly two years they'd want to hug her, too."
She released Katherine after a final squeeze, and stood staring at her
with a puzzled expression on her vivacious face.
"What's the matter?" asked Katherine wonderingly. "Have I got something
on wrong-side before?"
"That's just what _is_ the matter," replied Veronica, her bewilderment
also manifesting itself in her tone. "You _haven't_ anything on
wrong-side before. You don't look natural. What has happened to you?"
"Nothing," replied Katherine, laughing, "and--everything. I've just
learned that clothes _do_ matter, after all."
"Why, Katherine Adams, you're perfectly stunning!" exclaimed Veronica in
sincere admiration. "That shade of blue in your dress--it was simply
_made_ for you."
"I just happened to get it by accident," said Katherine deprecatingly,
almost sheepishly, yet thrilled through and through with pleasure at
Veronica's words of appreciation. It was no small triumph to be admired
by Veronica, whose highly artistic nature made her extremely critical of
people's appearance.
"How I used to make your artistic eye water!" said Katherine laughingly.
"It's a wonder you stood me as well as you did."
"It was not I who had to 'stand' you, but you who had to 'stand' me,"
said Veronica seriously. "In spite of your loose ends you were--what do
you call it? 'all wool and a yard wide,' but I was the original prune."
Veronica, while a perfect master of literary English, still faltered
deliciously over slang phrases.
Katherine, as usual, steered away from the subject of Veronica's former
attitude toward her. When a thing was over and done with, Katherine
argued, there was no use of dragging it out into the light again.
"You haven't told me yet how you happen to be here in this tea-room this
afternoon," she said, by way of changing the subject, "when you told us,
over your own signature, that you would have to stay in New York all this
week. What do you mean," she finished with mock gravity, "by deceiving us
so?"
"I have to play at a concert here in town to-night," explained Veronica.
"It will be necessary for me to be back at the Conservatory to-morrow,
and am returning by a late train to-night. I didn't know about it when I
wrote to Nyoda, or I should have insisted on her coming in for the
concert and bringing all the girls along. It's an emergency case; I'm
just filling in on the program in place of a 'cello soloist who was taken