The Chocolate Debutante Read Online Free PDF Page A

his friends. They all looked up at Susan, their mouths hanging open and dazed looks on their faces.
     
    Susan thought they all looked very funny. She smiled and waved her hand and then closed the window and went along to the private parlor next door.
     
    Harriet thought with a pang that Susan looked even more beautiful than before. “Aren’t you cold?” she asked.
     
    Susan shook her blond curls by way of reply and sat down at the table.
     
    Dinner proved to be a fine spread. It consisted of fish in oyster sauce, boiled beef, roasted neck of pork with apple sauce, some hashed turkey, mutton steaks, salad, roasted wild duck, fried rabbits, a plum pudding, and tartlets.
     
    But before they could begin this feast, the landlord entered with a waiter bearing a bottle of iced champagne. “What is this?” demanded Harriet. “I did not order champagne!”
     
    “His lordship has sent it as a present.”
     
    “Which lord?” asked Harriet, her heart beating hard as she suddenly thought he must be referring to Lord Dangerfield.
     
    “Lord Ampleforth, madam. He and his friends are desirous of presenting the champagne to the young lady.”
     
    Harriet’s face hardened. “Take it away. We do not know Lord Ampleforth and do not wish presents.”
     
    When the landlord and the waiter had left, Harriet eyed Susan sharply. “Do
you
know this Lord Ampleforth?”
     
    “Never heard of him.” Susan eyed the food greedily. “This will all get cold, Aunt, if we do not begin.”
     
    “Begin by all means.”
     
    Susan fell to with a will, wielding her knife and fork like a trencherman.
     
    “Do you always eat so much?” Harriet was just beginning, when she heard the sound of masculine voices raised in a love song coming from outside.
     
    She went to the window and looked down. There were four young men there, one had a mandolin, and they were singing while staring up at the window.
     
    She retreated hurriedly and sat down again.
     
    Susan was now cramming food into her mouth with her fingers. “Don’t do that,” said Harriet sharply. “Susan, stop eating for just one moment and listen to me. There are four gentlemen below serenading, and I believe you must be the target, for it can hardly be me.”
     
    “No,” said Susan with a giggle. “You are too old.”
     
    Oh, the heartlessness of youth, thought Harriet bleakly.
     
    “They must have seen you, but how could they?” she asked.
     
    “Four of them,” said Susan, spearing a large piece of pork and cramming it into her mouth.
     
    “Yes.”
     
    “Oh, ’em.”
     
    “I beg your pardon?”
     
    Susan gulped down the pork and smiled sunnily at her aunt. “I heard people arriving before I came in to dinner, so I looked out the window and there were these four men all gaping up at me with such silly looks on their faces. I waved to them.”
     
    “You must never do that again,” said Harriet, exasperated.
     
    “It seemed only polite. I used to do that at the seminary. It was always so boring, don’t you know, what with pretending to be ill and all, so sometimes I would wave out my window at people passing in the street and they were most kind and would send in poems and flowers and chocolates.”
     
    Harriet was horrified. “And did not the teachers stop these gifts from strangers?”
     
    “Never saw them. I bribed the hall staff to smuggle them up to me. You see, it was the chocolates I liked. I wasn’t allowed any of those in the seminary, and the staff would not go out and buy them for me for fear of being discovered. Shopkeepers are a gossipy lot.”
     
    “Susan, I am going to lecture you severely…”
     
    Susan pointed her fork at her aunt. “If we are to deal together, you will find, Aunt Harriet, that I will listen to any stricture, but not when it comes between me and food.”
     
    “I will bide my time on this occasion,” said Harriet.
     
    But when pretty Susan appeared to have demolished everything in sight, burped, and wiped