I had felt so safe, for cook lured me on with false hopes: she offered to make marmalade, and she demanded a cat. This was tantamount to staying for ever. She made the marmalade, and we scoured the neighbourhood for a cat.
It may be a digression, but I really must remark here on the scarcity of any particular commodity of which one happens to stand in need. If the world can be said to be overstocked by any one article it really might be said to be cats; but had we been in search of a Koh-i-noor it could not have been more hopeless. We waited three months for a cat to be made to order, so to speak, and the very day his godmother left—we named him in honour of our departed cook—he appeared in the person of a long, lank, rattailed, ignominious tabby, on whom food made no earthly impression. His name is Boxer—Mister Boxer.
There is a great daily paper in London in whose columns the nobility and gentry clamour for what the Americans delicately call "help." I have myself pressed into four alluring lines a statement of the advantages I had to offer, and have received no reply. I have answered thirty-five advertising parlour-maids, enclosing stamped envelopes, and have had no reply. My cook having retired from the scene, and there being nothing left to remind me of her but Mister Boxer, I again sought solace in those delusive columns.
"What have I done," I cried in anguish, "that all cooks should avoid me?"
Just then my dearest friend was announced; at least, she is as dear as distance will permit in London.
"What's happened?" she asked at once.
I explained mournfully that cook had gone.
"Whenever we had company she always said it wasn't Lord Kitchener, though I never said it was."
"I wish to goodness," and my friend flung herself into the nearest chair, "that my cook would go."
For a moment I gasped; it sounded so audacious.