"'Oh, no,' she answered; 'I do not intend to be inferior to any countrywoman. Then there is roast chicken. After that a lettuce salad with mayonnaise dressing; I do not believe cotters have mayonnaise dressing, nor shall we every day; but this is an exceptional meal. For the next course I have made a pie, and then we shall have black coffee. If you want wine you can get a bottle from the wine-hamper; but I shall not take any: I intend to live consistently through the whole of this experience.'
"There was something a little odd about the soup: it tasted as if a variety of vegetables had been washed in it and then the vegetables thrown away. I removed the soup-plates while Anita went out to get the next course. When she put the dish on the table she said something had given way while the fowl was cooking, and it had immediately stuck its legs high in the air. 'It looks funny,' she remarked, 'but in carving you can cut the legs off first.'
"I found one side of the fowl much better cooked than the other,—in fact, I should have called it kiln-dried,—and the other side had certainly been warmed. The mayonnaise was very peculiar and made me think of the probable necessity of filling the lamps, and I hoped Baxter had had this attended to. The pie was made of gooseberry jam, the easiest pie in the world to make, Anita told me. 'You take the jam just as it is, and put it between two layers of dough, and then bake it.' The coffee was very like black writing-ink, and, having been made for a long time, was barely tepid.
"Strange as it may appear, however, I ate a hearty dinner. I was very hungry.
"'Now,' said Anita, as she folded her napkin, 'I do not believe you have enjoyed this dinner half as much as I enjoyed the cooking of it, and I am not going to wash up anything, for I will not deprive myself of the pleasure of sitting with you while you smoke your after-dinner cigar on the front porch. These dishes will not be wanted until to-morrow, and if you will take hold of one end of the table we will set it against the wall. There is a smaller table which will do for our breakfast.'
"I drank several glasses of wine as I smoked, but I did not feel any better. If I had known what was going to happen I should have preferred to go hungry. I did not tell Anita I was not feeling well, for that would have made her suffer in mind more than I was suffering in body; but when I had finished my smoke, and she had gone into the house to light the parlor lamp, I hurried over to the barn, where Baxter had had a telephone put up, and I called him up in town, and told him to send me a chef who could hoe and dig a little in the garden.
"'I thought you would want a man of that kind,' Baxter telephoned. 'Will Isadore do? He is at your town house now, and can leave by the ten-o'clock train.'
"I knew Isadore. He was the second chef in my town house, a man of much experience, and good-natured. I told Baxter to make him understand what sort of place he was coming to, and to send him on without delay.
"'Do you want him to live in the house?' asked Baxter. And I replied that I did not.
"'Very good,' said he; 'I will have a tent put up for him near Baldwin's.'