The Second Visit, 3

So it was that a portion of their bargain was fulfilled: before the day was through, the boy would be read to, which apparently was what he wanted. They played a game of chess, and he lost, this time miserably. Perhaps it was that she simply tried a bit more than usual, or perhaps he was thinking of something else. In any case, it was a disapproving look that Loring gave him, and he appeared to feel it keenly.

— Let’s read in the kitchen, said Loring. That was another of Ezra’s rules, that the kitchen is a good place for reading aloud. Whether it is true or not, or whether it was just so for him and for me, is something else.

— I am ready to be read to in the kitchen.

— Well, good, let’s go then.

And so into the kitchen they went. To get there, one proceeds down the dark hall (for although it is day, all the shutters are closed), to the very end, where there is a quick right turn and then a left. One opens a door and goes into the pantry, a small room, and through the pantry into the kitchen, which occupies the rear of the house.

Loring remembered a poem about kitchens that went like this:

Let me die in a kitchen,

Where bread is baking,

and the hour is nigh to three.

For in the marshes,

a little house goes running

on long legs,

and I begin to remember

the places I have been

when things are newly made.

One might say, and I cannot object, that this is not really a poem about kitchens. But it mentions a kitchen, and does so in the very first line.

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