"Hang in den Kitchen!" says Anna firmly, and at that we gave in, because cooks is cooks, and what's a bird more or less after all? Still I didn't like him on account of suspecting he wasn't a neutral any more than Anna was for all she claimed to be a Swede. I had read a piece in the paper about where the Germans was pretending to be Swede or Spanish or anything they could get away with so's to remain free to spread Bolshevism and influenza and bombs and send up the price of dry and fancy goods and put through the Prohibition amendment and all them other gentle little activities for which they are so well and justly known.
But I thought knowledge is power as the guy which wrote the copy-book says, and I had the drop on Anna through being on to her disguise and beside which I could see Ma was going to be miserable if she had to eat out while her hand was in the sling, and so we took the viper to our bosom, or in other words, we hired her, and anyways, she had already accepted the job and it would of been a lot of trouble to get her out by force. Which, believe you me, a person seldom has to do with servants now-a-days, and confirmed me about her being German because naturally people don't hire them, if acknowledging to themselves that they are Germans any more than they would now deliberately import sauerkraut or any other German industry. Do you get me? You'd better!
But in this case there was a reasonable doubt together with a real necessity, although from what come of it, I feel, looking backwards, it would of been better to eat out and suffer than to of compromised with our patriotic consciences like we done at that time. Because there is no reasonable doubt but that Anna's coming into the house was greatly responsible for Ma's catching Bolshevism.
II
Not that she caught it off Anna directly, because for once we had a cook which couldn't talk or understand American and so there was no use in Ma's hanging around the kitchen worrying the life out of her. And so the very first morning Anna was on the premises, Ma commenced hanging around and worrying the life out of me.
It happened we was waiting for the aeroplane I was to go up in to arrive at the studio, and so for once having my morning for myself, I thought I would just dash off my income tax return, and be done with it.
But it seems that this is one of the things which is easier said than done, the same as signing the peace-treaty, and believe you me, the last ain't got a thing on the former and I don't know did Pres. Wilson make out his own income tax return or not. But if he did and the collector of Internal Revenue left him get by with it as he must of or why would the Pres. be in Paris, which is out of the country, well anyways, if the Pres. did it alone, believe you me, he will get away with the treaty all right, and probably even write in this here Leg of Nations under table 13, page 1, of return and instructions page 2 under K (b) without having to ask anybody how to do it, he having undoubtedly shown the power to think.
Well anyways, I had taken all the poker-chips, silk-sale samples, old theatre programs and etc., out of my desk, found my fountain pen and a bottle of ink, and was turning that cute little literacy test around and over to see where would I commence and had got no further than the realization that most of my brains is in my feet instead of behind my face, when Ma comes in and commences worrying me because she could not cook nor yet crochet like the lillies of the field, or whatever that well-known idle flower was. I tried to listen at least as politely as is ever required of a daughter to her mother, but when I was trying to figure out my answer to question No. 5 and getting real mad over its personalness, I couldn't stand to hear her complain over not being able to crochet them terrible mats she makes which are not fit for anything except Xmas presents, anyways.
"The trouble with you, Ma," I snapped at last, "is that you aught to get a live-wire outside interest. You're getting out of date. Ladies don't crochet no more and even knitting has been dished by the armistice. You never read a newspaper or a book. You should go in for something snappy and up to the moment like literature or jobs for soldiers, or business, or something."
This got Ma's goat right off, like I hoped it would.