Mary made one more attack. Salad was the Angel's weak point as asparagus was mine, and Mary always made a dream of beauty out of it. She scorned "fatiguer la laitue" as the French do. Instead she kept it in a bowl of water until thoroughly "awake," as she called it. Then carefully examining each leaf separately, she tied them in a wet cloth and laid them "spang on the ice," which course of treatment rendered them so crisp that to cut them with a sharp salad-fork was always to get a little dressing splashed in one's eye. Furthermore she arranged them in the best cut-glass dish in symmetrical rows with the scarlet tomatoes tucked invitingly in the centre. She presented us with such a dish on this evening. Then when Aubrey (who will be remembered when he is no more, not for his moral qualities nor for his domestic virtues, but for the skill with which he used to mix a salad dressing) went to work and prepared one from tarragon, vinegar, oil, Nepaul pepper, paprika, black and cayenne pepper, to say nothing of plenty of salt,—words fail me! I simply pass away at the recollection.
I have never been able to make up my mind whether Mary suspected us or not. Of course we overdid the part, but it was a physical necessity. I can go without a thing altogether, but I cannot be moderate. I really thought I was not hungry until Aubrey told me not to eat, and that, of course, was enough to make any woman ravenous. If he had told me "to buck up and eat a good dinner," of course I could only have nibbled.
She broke out again, and pleaded hard for us to drink our coffee, but we were obdurate.
Finally we got up from the table and Mary removed the cloth, muttering to herself. I overheard some of it, but where any other cook would have been furious at us for not eating her delicious dinner, the dear old soul's rage was all directed against herself, and she was vituperating herself in language which would not have gone through the mails.
But now the question was where and how to get our dinner so that Mary would not suspect. To send her to church and forage in our own ice-box was out of the question, for she knows to a dot how much there is of everything, and I cannot take an olive that she does not miss it and come and ask me if I took it, to avert suspicion from the ice-man. Furthermore, it we both went out, she might suspect. And we had taught her too heroic a lesson to go and spoil it by carelessness now.
"What shall we do?" murmured my husband.
"There's only one thing to do," I said, in low, even tones, with my book before my face. "Go out and buy something ready cooked,—something which leaves no trace,—something small enough to go into your overcoat pocket, but oh, in the name of heaven, get enough!"
Mary came in as the outer door slammed.
"Where's boss gone?" she demanded. Perhaps it was only my guilty conscience which made her tones sound suspicious.
"Just over to Columbus Avenue to get a paper," I said.