Then he would come out, this ten-year-old child, a little smile of pleasure on his face and a big steaming pot of the most wonderful food imaginable in his hands.
'Do you know what you ought to do?' his aunt said to him, eating the food. 'You ought to sit down and write a cookbook.
He looked at her across the table, eating slowly.
'Why not?' she cried. 'I've taught you how to write and I've taught you how to cook, and now you've only got to put the two things together. You write a cookbook, my darling, and it'll make you famous all over the world.'
'All right,' he said. 'I will.'
And that same day, Lexington began writing the first page of that great book on which he worked for the rest of his life. He called it Eat Well And Healthily. Seven years later, by the time he was seventeen, he had recorded over nine thousand different recipes, all of them original, all of them wonderful.
But now, suddenly, his work was interrupted by the death of Aunt Glosspan. She was ill during the night and Lexington found her lying on the bed screaming with pain. She was a terrible sight. The boy wondered what he should do. Finally, to cool her down, he fetched a bucket of water from the river and poured it over her head, but this only made her worse, and the old lady died in an hour.
'This is really too bad,' the poor boy said, pinching her several times to make sure that she was dead. 'And how sudden! Only a few hours ago she seemed in the very best health. She even ate three large portions of my newest mushroom dish and told me how good it was.'
After crying bitterly for several minutes, because he had loved his aunt very much, he carried her outside and buried her in the garden.
The next day, while he was tidying up her things, he found an envelope that was addressed to him in Aunt Glosspan's handwriting. He opened it and took out two fifty-dollar notes and a letter. The letter said:
Darling boy, I know that you have never been down the mountain since you were thirteen days old, but as soon as I die you must put on a pair of shoes and a clean shirt and walk down into the village and find the doctor. Ask the doctor to give you a death certificate. Then take this to my lawyer, a man called Mr Samuel Zuckermann, who lives in New York City and who has a copy of my will. Mr Zuckermann will arrange everything. The money in this envelope is to pay the doctor for the certificate and for the cost of your journey to New York. Mr Zuckermann will give you more money when you get there, and it is my wish that you use it to continue your work on that great book of yours until you are satisfied that it is complete in every way. Your loving aunt, Glosspan Lexington, who had always done everything his aunt had told him, put the money in his pocket, put on a pair of shoes and a clean shirt, and went down the mountain to the village where the doctor lived.
'Old Glosspan?' the doctor said. 'Is she dead?'
'Certainly she's dead,' the boy answered. 'If you come home with me now I'll dig her up and you can see for yourself.'
'How deep did you bury her?' the doctor asked.
'Two or three metres down, I think.'
'And how long ago?'
'Oh, about eight hours.'
'Then she's dead,' the doctor announced. 'Here's the certificate.'
Lexington now left for the city of New York to find Mr Samuel Zuckermann. He travelled on foot, and he slept under bushes, and he lived on berries and wild plants, and it took him sixteen days to reach the city.
'What a place this is!' he cried, as he stood staring around him. 'There are no chickens or cows anywhere and none of the women looks like Aunt Glosspan at all.'
Lexington had never seen anyone like Mr Zuckermann before, either.
He was a small man with a large nose, and when he smiled, bits of gold flashed at you from lots of different places inside his mouth. In his office, he shook Lexington warmly by the hand and congratulated him on his aunt's death.
'I suppose you know that your dearly loved aunt was a woman of great wealth?' he said.
'Do you mean the cows and the chickens?'
'I mean five hundred thousand dollars,' Mr Zuckermann said.
'How much?'
'Five hundred thousand dollars, my boy. And she's left it all to you.' Mr Zuckermann leaned back in his chair. 'Of course, I shall have to take 50 per cent for my services,' he said, 'but that still leaves you with two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.'
'I am rich!' Lexington cried. 'This is wonderful! How soon can I have my money?'
'Well,' said Mr Zuckermann, 'luckily for you, I know the people at the city tax office and I'm confident that I'll be able to persuade them to forget about any taxes that your aunt owed.'
'How kind you are,' said Lexington.
'I shall have to give some people a small tip, of course.'
'Whatever you say, Mr Zuckermann.'
'I think a hundred thousand would be enough.'
'But how much does that leave for me?' the youth asked.
'One hundred and fifty thousand. But then you've got the funeral expenses to pay out of that.'
'Funeral expenses?'
'You've got to pay the funeral company. Surely you know that?'
'But I buried her myself, Mr Zuckermann, in the field behind the house. I never used a funeral company.'
'Listen,' Mr Zuckermann said patiently. 'You may not know it but there is a law in this State which says that no one can receive any money from a will until the funeral company has been paid.'
'You mean that's a law?'
'Certainly it's a law, and a very good law, too. Funerals are one of our country's great traditions. They must be protected at all costs.' Mr Zuckermann himself, together with a group of doctors, controlled a large funeral company in the city. The celebration of death was therefore a deeply religious affair in Mr Zuckermann's opinion. 'You had no right to go out and bury your aunt like that,' he said. 'None at all.'
'I'm very sorry, Mr Zuckermann.'
'It's completely un-American.'
'I'll do whatever you say, Mr Zuckermann. All I want to know is how much I'm going to get in the end, when everything's paid.'
There was a pause.
'Shall we say fifteen thousand?' he suggested, flashing a big gold smile. 'That's a nice figure.'
'Can I take it with me this afternoon?'
'I don't see why not.'
So Mr Zuckermann called his chief clerk and told him to give Lexington fifteen thousand dollars. The youth, who was delighted to be getting anything at all, accepted the money gratefully and put it in his bag. Then he shook Mr Zuckermann warmly by the hand, thanked him for all his help, and went out of the office.
'The whole world is in front of me!' Lexington cried as he went into the street. 'I now have fifteen thousand dollars to help me until my book is ready. After that, of course, I shall have a lot more.' He stood in the street, wondering which way to go. He turned left and began walking slowly down the street, staring at the sights of the city. 'I must have something to eat. I'm so hungry!' he said. The boy had eaten nothing except berries and wild plants for the past two weeks, and now his stomach wanted solid food.
He crossed the street and entered a small restaurant. The place was hot inside, and dark and silent. There was a strong smell of cooking-fat. Lexington seated himself at a corner table and hung his bag on the back of the chair. This, he told himself, is going to be most interesting. In all my seventeen years I have tasted only the cooking of two people, Aunt Glosspan and myself. But now I am going to try the food of a new cook and perhaps, if I am lucky, I might get a few ideas for my book.