"Ma'am!" said Kitten Brown and I with spontaneous alacrity, leaping from the ground as though shot at.
"This cooking," she said, with an ominous stare at us, "is atrocious. Don't you know how to cook?"
I said with a smiling attempt at ease:
"There are various ways of cooking food for the several species of mammalia which an all-wise Providence—"
"Do you think you're cooking for wild-cats?" she demanded.
Our smiles faded.
"It's my opinion that you're incompetent," remarked the Reverend Dr. Jones, slapping at midges with a hand that might have rocked all the cradles of the nation, but had not rocked any.
"We're not getting our money's worth," said Miss Dingleheimer, "even if the Government does pay your salaries."
I looked appealingly from one stony face to another. In Miss McFadden's eye there was the somber glint of battle. She said:
"If you can guide us no better than you cook, God save us all this day week!" And she hurled the contents of her tin plate into Lake Susan W. Pillsbury.