Page:Far from the Maddening Girls.djvu/118

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have fallen under Galvin’s eyes, but I was obliged to keep it concealed under a pile of shirts in my clothes-press for a full week, before I was able to catch the ashman when she was not by.

The time absorbed in separating the cake from the oven was responsible for the fiasco of the eggs — that, and the fact that I forgot to put a lump of butter in the pan. They adhered, all six of them, to the latter, with the utmost promptitude, and a tenacity worthy of a like number of leeches or English bull-dogs, and by the time I had persuaded them to loosen their grip upon it, they were quite unfit for publication. I have never discovered what it was I did to hurt the feelings of the potatoes, but they sulked from the outset, and obstinately refused to be baked. The edible part of them, after a solid hour in the oven, was, like beauty, skin-deep and no more.

Arbuthnot made the tea. It was excellent,