We gave it up finally, and went back to our dessert and coffee. My wife refused to be satisfied that the tomatoes were actually gone. She was constantly getting up to open the iron door and view the emptiness behind it—as if she expected the apparent dematerialization of the pan and tomatoes to be reversed,—while our friend looked on with an aspect of forced resignation.
I left them after a time, and went out for an after-dinner smoke on the back doorstep. I had hardly lighted my pipe when I heard a cry blended of two voices in the kitchen—a shriek from my wife, and a mildly profane ejaculation from our friend. Rushing in, I saw an astonishing sight—our friend, with staring eyes and blanched face, supporting himself against the table as if staggered by a blow, my wife kneeling in front of the open iron door beneath the fireplace, and the baking pan and its dozen tomatoes lying before her on the floor!
It was some time before I could get a coherent account of what had happened. It was finally developed, however, that after I had left the room the conversation continued on the inexplicable conduct of the tomatoes. "I can't believe they are not there!" my wife asserted, and, for the dozenth time or so, she again knelt on the floor and again opened the door.
"I was standing right behind her," said our friend, "and saw her swing the door open, but there was nothing inside. At the same instant I heard a thump on the floor, and there the whole outfit was, just in front of her. I don't know where the things came from—perhaps down the chimney:—at any rate, one moment there was nothing there; the next, the pan and the tomatoes were on the floor."
After we had regained our composure we considered what we should do with the tomatoes. Our friend said he didn't think he wanted any of them, and I confessed to an equal indifference—so capricious, and often influenced by slight circumstances, is the appetite!
My wife, as usual, settled the matter. "Take them away!" she said. "Throw them into the garbage barrel!"—which was accordingly done; melancholy end of a culinary triumph! Yet we ought at least to have tasted those tomatoes: under the title "tomato à la diable" they might have found a place in the cook books.