"Well, then, to-morrow," she said pensively, "I will attend to the matter. No doubt Anna will be delighted. And, Archie, she has just the sort of face that would look well beneath a cap."
"I didn't like her in the hat trimmed with Trianon gardens," I muttered with strange persistence.
"Perhaps it was a bit elaborate," Letitia agreed. "But now, Archie, I'm sleepy, and—let us drop Anna. Next week, perhaps, I shall buy her a pretty little black bonnet, tied with strings, under the chin. I intend to treat her nicely and generously and—"
"I know I shall emaciate during the night," I couldn't help declaring, as I switched off the light, "I'm as hungry as a hunter, and—and—we finished the bread!"
[CHAPTER III]
"Since Eve ate apples, much depends on dinner." If Byron, whose genius few will deny, can make such a remark, there is no need for me to apologize for dwelling upon a topic that long-haired dreamers, with bad digestions, might call niggledy-piggledy. In fact, I have no intention of so doing. It has long been my idea that dinner is not so much a mere matter of material indulgence, as of artistic communion, to which food is an accompaniment. The fact that the very best music, cruelly harmonized, must distress—that Melba, Calvé, and Nordica warbling to a discordant accompaniment, would produce nausea—can certainly need no discussion. It is a fact that is self-evident. It has an Euclidian Q.E.D-ness that is instantly apparent.
I told Letitia that I was not going to emulate the example of so many men and treat myself each day to a choice luncheon in town. That has always seemed to me to be a greedy process. Better—far better is it—to return to one's home at night, hungry as a hunter, with an appetite for healthful food, rather than an abnormal craving for suprême de volaille. Don't you think so? I intended to save myself up for Letitia—to accumulate hunger-pangs, and bring them to her table for artistic treatment. My wife fully agreed with me, and although I brought the due amount of hunger-pangs to our first dinner at home and discovered, perhaps, that "delicatessen" food didn't treat them quite as artistically as they deserved, I was not discouraged.