The Baker’s Daughter Read Free

something picturesque, something artistic, with graceful flowing draperies and untidy hair. Sue had seen an amateur production of Patience that the Beilford Dramatic Club had presented to its admiring neighbors and fellow townsmen the previous year, and she had imagined Mrs. Darnay would be “like that.” Mrs. Darnay was not the least “like that,” but she was sufficiently peculiar and striking to obviate disappointment. She was tall and slim, with very fair hair set in sculptured waves, and her face was “made up” with paint and powder—red lips, pink cheeks, and dark blue shadows around her eyes. Her clothes were peculiar too, for she was hatless, and her leopard-skin coat, sleek and shiny, reached only as far as her knees, while her slim legs were clad in stockings so fine that they looked as if they were bare. Sue gazed at Mrs. Darnay, fascinated by the strangeness of her.
    Mrs. Darnay turned from the assistant who was attending to her order and smiled at Mr. Bulloch engagingly. “So good of you to spare me a few minutes,” she told him in a high, light voice.
    â€œWhat can I do for ye, Mrs. Darnay?” he asked. “No complaints, I’m hoping.”
    â€œNo complaints at all,” declared Mrs. Darnay. “The fact is I want you to help me. I don’t know many people about here, you see, and I wondered if you could tell me where I could find a cook.”
    â€œA cook?” echoed Mr. Bulloch in surprise.
    â€œI brought my cook with me,” Mrs. Darnay explained, “but she had to go home. It is dreadfully inconvenient. I haven’t got anybody now except my French maid, and she can’t do everything. Besides, she isn’t a good cook, and my husband is so particular.”
    â€œWell, it’s not quite in my line,” said Mr. Bulloch, smiling. “I’ve enlarged the scope of my business a good deal, but this is the first time I’ve been asked for a cook.”
    â€œOh, I know!” Mrs. Darnay cried. “Of course I know it isn’t really in your line , but I hoped perhaps you might be able to suggest somebody. I’m really almost desperate.”
    â€œWhat about me?” inquired Sue in her quiet voice.
    Neither Mr. Bulloch nor Mrs. Darnay had noticed Sue, for she was a person who could fade into the landscape when she pleased, but now they both turned and looked at her: Mrs. Darnay critically, Mr. Bulloch with incredulous dismay.
    â€œI can cook quite well,” Sue continued, “and I’m a good washer too. I don’t mind getting up early.”
    Mrs. Darnay looked at her searchingly and liked what she saw. She was so desperate for a cook that she would have taken almost anybody and had an absurd impulse to seize upon Sue then and there and abduct her forcibly, but it was better not to seem too eager, so she curbed her feelings and asked the conventional question, “Have you got good references?”
    Sue was about to reply that she had no references at all, but she was forestalled by Mr. Bulloch.
    â€œThis is my granddaughter, Mrs. Darnay,” he declared in his most kingly manner. “My granddaughter, Miss Pringle.”
    â€œThen of course I shan’t require references,” said Mrs. Darnay, smiling sweetly.
    â€œBut it’s a mistake!” Mr. Bulloch cried. “I mean, there’s no need for Sue… I don’t want her to…”
    Mrs. Darnay summoned all her tact and charm (for she had to have a cook, and she had set her heart on this nice, superior-looking girl). “If Miss Pringle would come temporarily,” she suggested, “just to help us out, just until I can find somebody else.”
    Miss Pringle agreed. She agreed to everything that Mrs. Darnay said, quite regardless of her grandfather’s objections. She agreed to go tomorrow and to stay for a week to see how she got on. “And then we’ll see,” Mrs. Darnay said with her charming