To make dumplings, sift the dry ingredients together. Then add the beaten eggs and enough cream to make a batter stiff enough to drop from a spoon.
Chapter 6
With Freni gone, it meant that I had to wash the supper dishes by myself—since I had banished Susannah to her room. Not that I minded. I find that immersing my hands in hot water is soothing whenever I, myself, am metaphorically in hot water. If my hands can stand it, so can I.
I surely did not expect company at the kitchen sink, and would almost have preferred not to have it. But it never pays to be rude to paying guests. Especially when they are trying to be kind.
“Where do you keep the dish towels?” asked Lydia merrily. She had changed out of her ball gown and into a casual, pink cashmere sweater and natural linen slacks.
I opened a drawer and took out a stack of neatly folded towels. “I may have to charge you extra for the privilege,” I said, only half-seriously.
“Slumming it, are we?” asked Delbert James, appearing in the doorway. He too had changed, or at least shed the tie and coat.
Lydia seemed to light up like a well-trimmed wick touched to flame. “I was hoping it was going to be just us girls,” she practically cooed. It was embarrassingly obvious she was hoping anything but that.
I swallowed my surprise for the third time and handed them each a towel. “Stack the dried dishes on that counter. I’ll put them away myself. But you can hang the pots on those pegs over there.”
“Aye, aye, Captain,” said Delbert. Without the tie, or maybe it was without the Congressman, he was a different person altogether.
“I suppose this is a first for both of you,” I teased. Well, maybe probed.
Delbert chuckled. “Not for me. Not by a long shot. I put myself through Northwestern washing dishes. Four years of journalism paid for with dishpan hands.”
“You’re a journalist by training?”
“Speech writer, actually.”
“That’s very interesting. My sister, Susannah, has always wanted to be a writer. But fiction, not speeches.”
“Is there a difference?” asked Lydia.
We all laughed. “What exactly does a Congressman’s aide do?” I asked.
“Besides speech writing,” said Delbert, “just about everything. On this trip, I even act as gun-bearer.”
“So only the Congressman hunts?”
“I hunt,” said Lydia. There seemed to be pride in her voice. “Daddy took me with him on safari in Africa when I was just a little girl. Of course, that was back in the old days, before we gave much thought to conservation.” She paused and gave me a slightly challenging look. “Deer hunting in Pennsylvania is a different story altogether.”
“Of course,” I agreed. I did understand. There are many more deer in the state now than there were when the first white settlers showed up. Every year over a thousand deer are killed by cars on our county’s highways alone. Not that I could ever kill one intentionally myself, although I have had the urge from time to time when I find them in my garden.
“Lydia, I mean, Mrs. Ream, is a first-class shot,” said Delbert. He lowered his voice. “She can outshoot the Congressman any day.”
Lydia laughed and flicked Delbert playfully with her towel. I looked discreetly away. I generally try to ignore my guests’ shenanigans, which doesn’t mean, of course, that I approve of them. It’s just that I have all I can handle in Susannah. “I aim to bag the biggest buck around,” she said, imitating Billy Dee’s accent.
“Does it bother you that we have A.P.E.S. staying at the inn?” I asked. It was more of a warning than a question. I genuinely liked Lydia and didn’t want to see her tackled by the likes of Jeanette Parker.
“What?”
“She means,” said Delbert, solemnly folding his dish towel, “that Billy Dee and the rest all belong to an organization called the Animal Parity Endowment Society. They’re philosophically and morally opposed to the taking of any animal’s life. They are especially against hunting for sport.”
Lydia’s face suddenly lost its animation. Where just a moment before, she had appeared relaxed and surprisingly youthful, now it was as if she had just donned a mask of well-bred inscrutability. It did not suit her nearly as well. “I see,” she said. Even her diction had changed. “And how long have you known this, Delbert?”
Delbert cleared his throat before answering. “The Congressman and I both recognized Ms. Parker and Ms. McMahon when we entered the dining room tonight. Both of them have been up on the Hill a number of times lobbying for their cause.”