Tinctorius snuck in with a plateful of pudding when the maids brought us our tea.
“Today’s special treat is pudding! Enjoy!”
“Yay! Thanks!” the girls whooped.
As per usual, “the girls” happened to include me. You better believe I was going to have a taste of that snack!
“Do you like it, Miss Lettie? Daisy?”
“Yeah!” the pair replied.
“All right—now I’ve got them by the stomachs! See what delicious treats I can make, Miss Lettie? Do you like me now?”
“Yeah!”
“Woohoo!”
Tinctorius raised a fist in triumph, but not for long.
“You’re my next-next favorite after Quin. No, next-next-next-next-next...”
“That’s scraping the bottom of the barrel!”
Violet frowned in thought as she counted off people on her fingers. To be fair, he was almost never around the house...but then again, neither was Quince.
Once we’d finished off our delicious snack, we went to the servants’ dining room to help the maids clean up. The negotiations with our suppliers must have finally finished, seeing as Cartham had gone back to the table to write something down on his sheet of paper.
“What are you up to now? Jotting down a recipe before you forget?”
“Oh, no. I’m making a sketch of my mental image before I lose it.”
“What mental image?”
We gathered around Cartham and took a peek at his work. The product of this fluid, uninterrupted flourish of his hand was a picture of one tasty-looking confit atop a plate.
“Wow, that looks downright mouthwatering! I didn’t know you were such a talented artist, Cartham.”
I was surprised at how good the drawing was. It was only a rough sketch, yet it perfectly conveyed the look he was going for.
“Merci!”
“Do you always make a point of doing this?”
I’d advised him on the dinner menu countless times before, but this was the first time I’d seen him make a sketch.
“Not usually. I only bother for formal dinners, or when I’m trying out a new recipe.”
“Huh, I see!”
Cartham kept on drawing the whole time he was explaining, filling the page with more and more sketches of tasty-looking foods.
“I always have an image of what I want a dish to look like, and putting it on paper is the only way to share that vision with my apprentices.”
“Interesting! So it’s how you convey information!”
“You got it.”
That made sense. Drawing a picture was the easiest way to get his ideas across to the other cooks.
While I was admiring the finished sketches, Violet and Daisy gawked at the artwork with stars in their eyes.
“Wow! That looks good!”
“Yum!”
“I bet it beats the pudding!”
“What?!”
It’s nice of you to compliment Cartham’s drawings, but you don’t have to put down Tinctorius while you’re at it! You’re going to bring the poor guy to tears!
“I wanna draw too,” said Violet.
“What, no more interest in helping with the clean-up?” I asked.
“Nope!”
It looked like she’d gotten bored of being the grown-ups’ little helper. But that was fine by me; having something to keep her busy would make things easier on the rest of us, at least.
The moment one of the maids brought them a piece of paper and a pen, Violet and Daisy jumped straight into drawing. With that, the impromptu Servants’ Dining Room Art Awards had begun.
“What should I draw?” my daughter pondered.
“I’m gonna draw that fruit over there.”
“Oh! Me too!”
The subject Daisy had spotted was an arrangement of fruit slices over a plate. The leftovers that hadn’t made it into our pudding, no doubt!
He cut it into such pretty shapes that I can’t imagine it’ll be too easy to draw...
Violet and Daisy fought a long, hard battle against the blank canvas.
“I can’t make it look yummy...”
“Me neither.”
Just as the girls were getting down on themselves, struggling to get their pictures to come out the way they wanted, a maid showed up with an announcement.
“Madam, Master Fisalis has returned.”