"Give me a new cook every week," she cried, "but deliver me from eating the same cooking for twenty-six years, as we have done. Adolphus says he has eaten four thousand French pancakes filled with raspberry jam, in that time, and that he'll die if he eats another one. I don't blame him," she added gloomily, "but what are we to do? I've urged her to better herself, but she won't. She quarrels with every servant who comes into the house; she's as deaf as a post, and she cooks abominably unless we have a dinner-party. If we weren't poor I'd pension her off; but we can't afford it," and she gave a bounce of resignation. "So don't talk to me of ancient family retainers; I'm sick of them!"
"You don't know what you are talking about," I said solemnly. "Listen to me. Last week I read an advertisement put in by a lady for her cook who was leaving—a cook with all the Christian virtues. I decided to answer it at once, but then I remembered the thirty-five who never replied to my letters. Just then He came down, placid and smiling—you know his way—and I explained to him that an Honourable Mrs. Smith was advertising for a place for her cook, in whom she took a personal interest.
"'My dear,' he said, 'don't write! Hire an ambulance and fetch her back, for a cook so recommended cannot be long for this world.'
"I took his advice and flew there in a hansom, and I was so excited that I forgot to watch the horse's ears. It was ten o'clock when I reached the Honourable Mrs. Smith's, and it was just like a smart 'at home.' At first I thought we had gone to the wrong house. Five ladies were going in, and I passed six in the hall. There were several reception-rooms and not a chair without a lady. A perplexed, willowy creature without a hat, who turned out to be the Honourable Mrs. Smith, led me to a seat under an imitation palm-tree, and said it was dreadful and that she would never do it again. Her cook had received forty-five letters and twenty wires; and fifteen messenger-boys and thirty-two ladies had called.
"There were twenty letters from persons of title. Of course, I thought of Lord Kitchener, and felt it useless to stay, but as I had come the Honourable Mrs. Smith advised me to wait; she was very civil.
"Now, you know my three rules: I won't have mixed religions in the kitchen because of squabbles; I won't take a servant out of a 'flat'; and I don't want one who wears glasses.
"When the paragon and I met under the imitation palm, I found she was all I did not want. She questioned me severely, and said that she was a Roman Catholic. I felt that the religion of a being for whom twenty of the nobility were clamouring was no concern of mine, and I was surprised when she asked me to leave my address. So little did I aspire to the paragon that I did not even ask if she could cook. I passed ladies still arriving, and I was so melancholy that I went home in a 'bus.
"The next morning I had a letter, and I can truly say I never was so flattered in my life, not even when He asked me to marry him, for the paragon had chosen me out of one hundred and sixty-five ladies, exclusive of twenty of the nobility.
"To be sure, she went against all my principles and I did not even know if she could cook; but she had chosen me!
"So she arrived in company of three cardboard bonnet-boxes and a japanned tin trunk.