I may add that that evening was the longest and least agreeable I ever experienced.
It may be that the incident with which I shall close this rather rambling chapter was promoted by the same humorists who devised the conceit of the floating milk pan, and was employed as a means of enabling us to recognize therein the authors of the former whimsicality. The two pleasantries seemed, at all events, to have been conceived in the same spirit, and although both were equally odd and purposeless, the superior elaborateness of the second distinctly showed an advance over the first, and gained our applause accordingly. There was no connection between these episodes in point of time; in fact, the second occurred several months after the first, in the hottest part of the year.
Our friend being a Briton by birth and an Australian by adoption, he had enjoyed rather a narrow experience in dietetics, particularly in the vegetable line. During the early part of our housekeeping we had found much difficulty in securing for our table any garden delicacies outside the conventional list of potatoes, "vegetable marrow," and cauliflower—until Providence brought to our back door an amiable Chinese huckster, who, with several compatriots, had established a small truck-farm in the neighborhood. Earnest representations regarding our vegetableless conditions inspired his interest, and the promise of good prices awakened his cupidity; and as a result of the agreement of these motives it was not long before our table greatly improved.
And I cannot help saying—although this is a digression—that our often-expressed words of satisfaction to our purveyor stimulated him to produce and bring to us everything of the best that he could raise. In his way he was an artist, with an artist's craving for praise—so that now and then he would appear with a gift of some new product for us to try, and occasionally with a small packet of choice tea or some other Celestial delicacy, for which he would invariably refuse payment.
"You should not bring me these things," my wife said to him one day. "You can't afford them."
"Me likee bling 'em," he replied. "An' me likee you. You no ploud. Mos' lady too ploud"—and swinging his baskets to his shoulder he departed.
It was my wife's delight to tempt our friend's appetite with all sorts of culinary novelties, which the new and more liberal order of things allowed her to prepare. With true British conservatism he would venture gingerly upon an unfamiliar dish, admit it "wasn't half bad," and end by eating as much of it as both of us others together. It was finally discovered that a particularly effective way of appeal to his nature was through the medium of baked stuffed tomatoes:—of these he seemed never to have enough, and, as a consequence, they were frequently upon our bill-of-fare during the summer. It seems incredible—and lamentable—that a man should have got well into the fifties without ever having eaten a baked stuffed tomato:—such, however, was our friend's unhappy case, and my wife made strenuous efforts to ameliorate it.
"I have a treat for you to-night," she said to our friend. "Guess what it is."
"Baked stuffed tomatoes," he responded promptly—and baked stuffed tomatoes it was.