“This is a horrible job!” she observed to the company at large, raising a flushed countenance. “I should like to wipe my heated brow, only my hands are too greasy. Nita, you’re great on physiology—do come and tell me where this animal’s joints are.”
“Get his side-fixings off,” counselled Nita, coming to her assistance. “You hold one leg and wing firmly, and I’ll hold the others, and we’ll pull. Something’s sure to come apart!”
Something did. Nita surveyed the dismembered bird with satisfaction.
“There!” she said. “That’s much simpler. Now you just go ahead and dig in here and there till you weaken the general resistance of the creature, and I’ll get the leg-joints apart.”
“It sounds simple, but when you come to reality you need an axe!” said Helen. “I suppose if one scrapes the bones until there’s nothing left on them one needn’t bother about getting inside?”
“Indeed, there’s the stuffing—or should be,” said Nita, wrestling gallantly with the leg-joint. At which Helen groaned, and fell to work anew with her inadequate weapon.
“Father would shudder at the carving, but there’s nothing wrong with the result,” she remarked placidly, sometime later. “After all, every one seems to have got some, and I believe that it really needs a genius to feed twelve people off one fowl!”
“Few could do it,” agreed Nita. “No one is sufficiently grateful to us, of course, but——”
“We _loved_ watching you!” said Grace Farquhar, in her soft drawl.
“I haven’t a doubt of it,” Helen laughed. “Well, it’s something to have been able to provide a circus before supper. Will anyone give me a méringue? Thanks, Jo. Have one yourself.”
“I’ve had all that’s prudent, thanks,” Jo Weston answered. “Méringues soon go to your head after you’ve been in strict training for tennis. Did you get an éclair, Nita?”
“I did—thanks to you,” Nita laughed. “Nothing but the vision of missing them would have dragged me from my pillow. I know your mother’s éclairs, you see. When are you going to learn to make them, Jo?”
“Mother might teach me in these hols., she said,” responded Jo. “But she’s not very keen on teaching us while we’re at school. She says we’re to learn all the cookery and domestic science stuff we can from Miss Smith, and she’ll see what it amounts to after we leave. Then she’ll round off the corners.” She laughed. “Personally, I think she’ll find us _all_ corners. Mother hasn’t got any degrees and letters after her name, like the worshipful Smithy, but when it comes to running a house practically, I think she’d leave her cold!”