"Then beat."

"First separate, then beat!" he repeated. "The author of that
cook book must have had a mean disposition. What's next? Hang
them?" He looked up at me with his boyish smile.

"Separate and beat," I repeated. If I lost a word of that recipe
I was gone. It was like saying the alphabet; I had to go to the
beginning every time mentally.

"Well," he reflected, "you can't beat an egg, no matter how cruel
you may be, unless you break it first." He picked up an egg and
looked at it. "Separate!" he reflected. "Ah--the white from
the--whatever you cooking experts call it--the yellow part."

"Exactly!" I exclaimed, light breaking on me. "Of course. I KNEW
you would find it out." Then back to the recipe--"beat until well
mixed; then fold in the whites."

"Fold?" he questioned. "It looks pretty thin to fold, doesn't it?
I--upon my word, I never heard of folding an egg. Are you--but of
course you know. Please come and show me how."

"Just fold them in," I said desperately. "It isn't difficult."
And because I was so transparent a fraud and knew he must find me
out then, I said something about butter, and went into the
pantry. That's the trouble with a lie; somebody asks you to tell
one as a favor to somebody else, and the first thing you know,
you are having to tell a thousand, and trying to remember the