Scene. A cosy apartment (the only one in which there is a fire after breakfast) provided with a telephone. The meals are ordered for the day. You have seen about the children’s spring hats, you have telephoned for a man to see about the knife machine. “Seeing” stands for opening it to get out the knife which cook dropped in without thinking, and that means ten shillings, “for man’s time—rep. kn. mach.” There does not seem to be anything else to see about just at present, and you settle down to a bit of crochet or, perhaps, to some occupation which takes your whole thought, such as writing a story for the magazines.
Cook slides round the door and looks at you. At the sight of her, all your ideas get up and say they are afraid they must be going. Ideas don’t like cook, because she doesn’t like them. She has a heavy hand with them and they won’t settle.
“Yes, cook, what is it?” you ask.
“If you please’m, the butcher hasn’t veal to-day.”
“Hasn’t he?” you say patiently, “then tell him to raise some animal that he has got.”
You wait, pencil in hand, for her to go.
“What shall I order, m’m?” she insists. “The boy is waiting.”
You quickly review last week’s meals. The household has had cutlets, fish, fowl, steak and a good many other things. Some people dislike the insides of animals so we will not complete the list. Anyhow, they seem to have eaten everything that there is in the world, except veal. Your horizon is all veal. There doesn’t, in fact, seem to be anything but veal to eat, “without,” as cook says, you have just what you had yesterday. The sudden passionate anger of the interrupted flies to your head.
“I don’t care if it’s stewed missionary,” you stammer; “but I will have something new. Go away quickly and think of something.”
Cook, like the fly, takes wing as far as the kitchen dresser and returns; stands once more, as it were, washing her front legs in the doorway.