"I will tell you how," I said with a great deal of dignity, "and since
you want to help, you may make it yourself."
He was delighted.
"Fine!" he said. "Suppose you give me the idea first. Then we'll go over
it slowly, bit by bit. We'll make a big fluffy omelet, and if the others
aren't around, we'll eat it ourselves."
"Well," I said, trying to remember exactly, "you take two eggs--"
"Two!" he repeated. "Two eggs for ten people!"
"Don't interrupt me," I said irritably. "If--if two isn't enough we can
make several omelets, one after the other."
He looked at me with admiration.
"Who else but you would have thought of that!" he remarked. "Well, here
are two eggs. What next?"
"Separate them," I said easily. No, I didn't know what it meant. I hoped
he would; I said it as casually as I could, and I did not look at him. I
knew he was staring at me, puzzled.
"Separate them!" he said. "Why, they aren't fastened together!" Then he
laughed. "Oh, yes, of course!" When I looked he had put one at each end
of the table. "Afraid they'll quarrel, I suppose," he said. "Well, now
they're separated."
"Then beat."
"First separate, then beat!" he repeated. "The author of that cook book
must have had a mean disposition. What's next? Hang them?" He looked up
at me with his boyish smile.
"Separate and beat," I repeated. If I lost a word of that recipe I was
gone. It was like saying the alphabet; I had to go to the beginning
every time mentally.
"Well," he reflected, "you can't beat an egg, no matter how cruel you
may be, unless you break it first." He picked up an egg and looked at
it. "Separate!" he reflected. "Ah--the white from the--whatever you
cooking experts call it--the yellow part."
"Exactly!" I exclaimed, light breaking on me. "Of course. I KNEW you
would find it out." Then back to the recipe--"beat until well mixed;
then fold in the whites."
"Fold?" he questioned. "It looks pretty thin to fold, doesn't it?
I--upon my word, I never heard of folding an egg. Are you--but of course
you know. Please come and show me how."
"Just fold them in," I said desperately. "It isn't difficult." And
because I was so transparent a fraud and knew he must find me out then,
I said something about butter, and went into the pantry. That's the
trouble with a lie; somebody asks you to tell one as a favor to somebody
else, and the first thing you know, you are having to tell a thousand,
and trying to remember the ones you have told so you won't contradict
yourself, and the very person you have tried to help turns on you and
reproaches you for being untruthful! I leaned my elbows despondently
on the shelf of the kitchen pantry, with the feet of a guard visible
through the high window over my head, and waited for Mr. Harbison to
come in and demand that I fold a raw egg, and discover that I didn't
know anything about cooking, and was just as useless as all the others.