great big fool! I'd sooner visit a pig in a pig pen. I … I … Oh, how I hate you, Bill Steele!"
"Your own promise you will keep because noblesse oblige and the Queen, especially when she is the Good Queen Bea, cannot lie."
The words, torn across and not to be read upon the crumpled paper, stood out as though in burning red letters in her mind. He had made her a promise at which she had scoffed, branding it ridiculous and absurd. She in turn had made another, if not meaning to keep it, then simply for the reason that she had not looked to him to keep his. But he had done so … and now, in his hateful way, reminded her of it.
"I'd see you dead before I lowered myself to come to you and … and cook for you!" she cried passionately, for the instant seeming actually to see the grinning face of Bill Steele.
And then suddenly, because she was Beatrice Corliss whose word men accepted out in the world of affairs as readily as they accepted her signature on paper, her face burning, her bosom grown tumultuous, she whirled and went straight through the house, from the one end where her office was to the other end where was the kitchen. The cook, who could scarcely have been more startled if Beatrice had been a ghost or a boa constrictor or any other sort of unaccustomed visitant here, looked at her with wide eves. Eyes which widened further as Beatrice gave her curt order:
"Show me how to cook! How to cook beans and hot cakes and trout and coffee. You've got to show
