MRS. LYMAN was in the kitchen superintending dinner. She was but a young housekeeper, so there was a certain amount of anxiety connected with making even a kettle of soup. She stirred and tasted and put in another shake of pepper and another pinch of salt, and said to her maid of all work, who stood by watching the process:
"I do wish I had an onion to put in it; soup is not very good without an onion flavor."
The remark was made more to herself than to Barbara, whose knowledge of English was somewhat limited. If it had not been, and if she had known the way and it had not been too late, she might have gone down town and bought some onions. As those obstacles were all in the way, the soup must needs go without.
When the six o'clock dinner was spread in the very prettiest dining room that can be imagined, the table glittering in its new silver, and the soup smoking in the tureen, the master of the house—a young man who had only enjoyed the privilege of sitting at the head of his own table for a couple of months—took it all in, as his own tastes were capable of doing. The savory odors, the cheery room, the careful attention to every detail of comfort and beauty, and then the slight figure opposite him, an embodiment of dignity and grace—he found nothing lacking in it all.
"This soup is not quite perfect," the young wife said, as she began to serve it, "I had no onions to put in it. I wish you would order some when you go down town to-morrow, Philip; they are nice just now for boiling, too."
This young couple had compared views on Browning and Ruskin, but not on onions. They had long ago discussed poetry, philosophies, and art, as well as architecture and house furnishings, and they had found hitherto that their tastes were in most delightful accord. Mrs. Lyman was not prepared, therefore, for the frown that contracted her husband's handsome brows as he ejaculated:
"Onions! Don't mention them. Excuse me from that purchase, please. They are abominable; not fit for human beings to eat. They ought to be banished from every respectable table."
"I beg your pardon," Mrs. Lyman answered, with rising color, "but all do not agree in such a sweeping denunciation. Many of the best physicians consider them most nutritious and healthful."
"Well, at all events, I shall not have my house polluted with the vile things. If there is anything that reminds one of a third-rate boarding-house, it is to get a whiff of onions the moment you enter the front door. It is vulgar and low. I can't see how any one of refined tastes can touch them. I hope you are not an onion eater, Nettie, because if you are, I fear you will have to abstain; I cannot abide them."
Now Mrs. Annette Heyward Lyman was exceedingly fond of onions. She was not of the sort to declare that she was "passionately fond of them," but she did think a nice dish of boiled onions, pretty white ones, swimming in hot milk and butter, was just the thing to go with—stewed chicken, say. Then, she enjoyed thin slices of raw onions cut into vinegar; and crisp, green-topped young ones, dipped in salt and eaten with bread and butter, were just delicious. And yet, if Philip had mildly hinted that he had a special aversion for that vegetable, she would have declared, "I will eat no onions while the world standeth." But to attack them in this sharp way, to declare them vulgar, and, above all, to dictate to her what she should or should not eat, as if he were her master, and to say "my house!" it was too much, and she answered in an icy tone that "she must beg leave to differ; to her mind the onion was a most delicious vegetable, and she must reserve for herself the right of choice in this and in other matters."