CHAPTER II
JOHN HENRY ON COOKS
When my wife made the suggestion that we should give a Thanksgiving dinner to our friends in the neighborhood it almost put me to the ropes.
You know I'm not much on the social gag, and to have to sit up and make good-natured faces at a lot of strangers gives me intermittent pains in the neck.
"Why should we give them a dinner?" I asked my wife. "Aren't most of them getting good wages, and why should we kill the fatted calf for a lot of home-made prodigals?"
"John, don't be so selfish!" was my wife's get-back. "There's a long winter ahead of us, and when we give one dinner to seven people that means seven people to give us seven dinners. Don't you see how our little plates of soup will draw compound interest if we invite the right people?"
My wife is a friend of mine, so I refused to quarrel with her.
"All right, my dear," I said, "but you must give the dinner one week before Thanksgiving."
"One week before Thanksgiving!" my wife re-echoed, "and why, pray?"