"Skip soup," said Mr. Salisbury cheerfully.
"We can't very well, dear," said his wife patiently, "because the dinner is just soup and a fish salad, and one needs the hot start in a perfectly cold supper. No. I'll go out."
"Can't you just tell me what to do?" asked Alexandra impatiently.
But her mother had gone. The girl sat on the arm of the deserted chair, swinging an idle foot.
"I wish I could cook!" she fretted.
"Can't you, Sandy?" her father asked.
"Oh, some things! Rabbits and fudge and walnut wafers! But I mean that I wish I understood sauces and vegetables and seasoning, and getting things cooked all at the same moment! I don't mean that I'd like to do it, but I would like to know how. Now, Mother'll scare up some perfectly delicious soup for dinner, cream of something or other, and I could do it perfectly well, if only I knew how!"
"Suppose I paid you a regular salary, Sandy—" her father was beginning, with the untiring hopefulness of the American father. But the girl interrupted vivaciously:
"Dad, darling, that isn't practical! I'd love it for about two days. Then we'd settle right down to washing dishes, and setting tables, and dusting and sweeping, and wiping up floors—horrors, horrors, horrors!"
She left her perch to take in turn an arm of her father's chair.