Then Mamie came with the summons to supper, and they hurried in to it, for ten hours’ work on section will make even a confirmed dyspeptic hungry—yes, and give him power properly to digest his food.
How pretty the table looked, with its white cloth and shining dishes! For Mary was a true Irish housewife, with a passion for cleanliness and a pride in her home. It was growing dark, and a lamp had been lighted and placed in the middle of the board, making it look bright and cosy.
“You set over there, m’ boy,” said Mary, herself taking the housewife’s inevitable place behind the coffee-pot, with her husband opposite. “Now, Mamie, you behave yourself,” she added, for Mamie was peeping around the lamp at Allan with roguish eyes. “We’re all hungry, Jack, so don’t keep us waitin’.”
How good the food smelt, and how good it tasted! Allan relished it more than he would have done any dinner of “Delmonicer’s,” for Mary was one of the best of cooks, and only the jaded palate relishes the sauces and fripperies of French chefs.
“A girl as can’t cook ain’t fit t’ marry,” Mary often said; a maxim which she had inherited from her mother, and would doubtless hand down to Mamie. “There’s nothin’ that’ll break up a home quicker ’n a bad cook, an’ nothin’ that’ll make a man happier ’n a good one.”
Certainly, if cooking were a test, this supper was proof enough of her fitness for the state of matrimony. There was a great platter of ham and eggs, fluffy biscuits, and the sweetest of yellow butter. And, since he did not drink coffee, Allan was given a big glass of fragrant milk to match Mamie’s. They were tasting one of the best sweets of toil—to sit down with appetite to a table well-laden.
After supper, they gathered on the front porch, and sat looking down over the busy, noisy yards. The switch-lamps gleamed in long rows, red and green and white, telling which tracks were open and which closed. The yard-engines ran fussily up and down, shifting the freight-cars back and forth, and arranging them in trains to be sent east or west. Over by the roundhouse, engines were being run in on the big turntable and from there into the stalls, where they would be furbished up and overhauled for the next trip. Others were being brought out, tanks filled with water, and tenders heaped high with coal, ready for the run to Parkersburg or Cincinnati. They seemed almost human in their impatience to be off—breathing deeply in loud pants, the steam now and then throwing up the safety-valve and “popping off” with a great noise.