Читать книгу The Queen Versus Billy, and Other Stories онлайн

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“You’re going to miss them things up there,” he would say. “My word, ain’t you going to miss them!”

This remark, incessantly repeated, made such an impression on me that I persuaded Bo to give me some lessons in bread-making, and even extorted from her, for a pound of beads paid in advance, the secret of her dynamitic yeast; so that I, too, started a bomb-shell of my own, and was half-way through a sack of flour before it finally dawned upon me that here was an art that I was incapable of learning. Bread I could certainly make, of a peculiarly stony character, but the trouble (as Hinton said) was the digesting of it afterwards. Nor was I more successful with my waffles, which glued themselves with obstinacy to the iron, like oysters on a rocky bottom, requiring to be detached in shreds by the aid of a knife. My efforts convulsed the Beautiful Man, and were the means of leading him, through his own vainglory and boastfulness, to perpetrate a basaltic lump of his own, the sight of which doubled Bo up with laughter, and caused her to burst out in giggles for a day afterwards. These attempts, of course, only enhanced her own prowess as a cook, and Hinton was never tired of expatiating on the lightness of her loaves and the melting quality of her cakes and waffles, with a glitter in his eye that I knew well how to interpret.