"This permotion is pretty foine," said Mrs. O'Callaghan. "Moike, my b'y, you have stepped up aisy loike a gintleman into Pat's place, and now let's see you cook."
Mike looked crestfallen at once. "I can't cook, mother," he said. "Not the least in the world. Often and often I've watched Pat, but I never could get the hang of it."
The widow was silent a moment,
"Well, then!" she cried, "you've got the hang of bein' an honest b'y, and not pretindin' to do what you can't do, and that's better as bein' the best cook in the world. Niver do you pretind, Moike, not because there's always somebody about to foind you out, but because pretindin's mean. I'd have no pride left in me if I could think I had a pretindin' b'y about the house. And now, Moike, I'll teach you to cook. It's my belafe you can larn it. Why, Pat didn't know nothin' about it when he begun, and now he can cook meat and potatoes and such better as many a doless girl I've seen. You think Pat's cookin' tastes pretty good, don't you, Moike?"
"I do, mother," said Mike earnestly and without a tinge of jealousy in his tone. He loved and admired Pat with all his heart.
"You can larn it, too, if you only think so," encouraged Mrs. O'Callaghan.
"There's them that think's that cookin's a special gift, and they're right, too. But there's things about cookin' that anybody can attind to, such as havin' kettles and pans clean, and kapin' the fire up when it's needed, and not roastin' a body's brains out when it ain't needed. Yes, and there's other things," she continued with increasing earnestness. "There's them as thinks if they've a book or paper stuck about handy, and them a-poppin' down to read a bit ivery now and then, it shows that cookin's beneath 'em. And then the meat burns or it sogs and gets tough, the potatoes don't get the water poured off of 'em in toime, and things biles over on the stove or don't bile at all, at all, and what does all that show, Moike? Not that they're above cookin', but that they're lackin' in sinse. For a sinsible person always pays attintion to what they're at, but a silly is lookin' all ways but the right wan, and ten to wan but if you looked inside their skulls you'd foind 'em that empty it would astonish you. Not that I'm down on readin', but that readin' and cookin' hadn't ought to be mixed. Now, Moike, if any of these things I've been tellin' you of happens to your cookin', you'll know where to put the blame. Don't say, 'I wasn't made to cook, I guess'. That's what I wanst heard a silly say when she'd burnt the dinner. But jist understand that your wits must have been off a piece, and kape 'em by you nixt toime. But what's that n'ise?"
She stepped to the door. A short distance off Jim was trying to get something away from Barney, who was making up in roars what he lacked in strength. Up went Mrs. O'Callaghan's hands to curve around her mouth and form a speaking trumpet.
"Jim, come here!" she called.
Jim began to obey, and his mother, leaving Mike inside to think over her remarks on cooking, stood waiting for his lagging feet.