"But," I interrupted, catching at a straw with the zest of a drowning man, "you notice that she wants to go into the service of a family with Christian principles. Now, I don't propose to saddle myself with Christian principles for the sake of my cook. I positively decline. What difference on earth it can possibly make to a cook whether she broil a steak for Buddhists, or Mohammedans, or Christian Scientists, or Swedenborgians—or even, for the Salvation Army, I can't imagine. Religion in the kitchen is just a bit far-fetched. I consider that advertisement most insulting, Letitia."
"Archie, really, you—"
"And I suppose," I went on, wound up, "that we should have to sing hymns with her every night and perhaps go to church with her on Sunday. I won't lend myself to such new-fangled notions. Cook is a question of dinner and not of religious belief. Besides, how could she know what our principles were? We might be atheists, and still inform her that we had Christian principles! I dare say that if we objected to her cooking, she would say we were not Christians, and if we protested at her going out more than eight times a week, she would declare that we were heathens. The child is bad enough, but the Christian principles are worse. I'm sorry, Letitia, but this advertisement is really a mass of palpable loopholes."
Tears came to Letitia's eyes. They seemed to be frequently in abeyance there nowadays, and they grieved me.
"For a couple who a few weeks ago knew nothing about the servant question, and indignantly scouted the idea that there was such a thing, we are getting on well," she said in a low voice. "You are growing awfully suspicious, Archie. The iron seems to have entered your soul. Because Anna Carter and Mrs. Potzenheimer were failures—quick failures I grant—you are now inclined to put every cook in the same boat. Oh, Archie, I'm ashamed of you. If you are always looking for evil motives you will find them, sure enough."
She paused, and the tears welled up again. The sight was so painful to me that—in sheer dread of its continuance—I succumbed. That is to say, I had no further adverse comments to make and the field was Letitia's! Undoubtedly, she knew it.
"You see, dear," she said in mollified tones, "you don't understand the probable position of poor Mrs. McCaffrey. Imagine her alone in the world with a child. She is poor. She must earn a living for the two of them. All she knows how to do is to cook. She places herself in the market as a cook. But there is the child! She can not smother it, and she must take it with her. She is therefore anxious that the place to which she takes it shall be respectable and—religious. I don't suppose that she is too fearfully particular. But naturally, she would not like to see the dear little thing in the house of a man who drank and swore, and of a woman who—well, of a woman who behaved in the femininely equivalent. So, just to protect herself, she says Christian principles. I admire her for it, Archie."
Silence on my part. Letitia's triumphant logic was of course unanswerable. I made no attempt to answer it, and Letitia was "riled."
"Do say something, dear," she urged.
"I don't want to vex you, Letitia," I said, "and that is why I am silent. But you surely must know that men with Christian principles do swear and do drink. Our old servant at Oxford had thoroughly Christian principles, but he used to beat his wife regularly every night. The Christian principles were there, but they were not sufficient."