Whoever is listening to our conversation professes heartbreak at our decision, and edges toward the rapidly filling dining-room.
We sit down to play lady of leisure, in various affected attitudes. We are not going near the kitchen again. The luncheon is simple. Everything is perfectly arranged. The servants can do it all. It's mere machine work.
From afar we observe the soup vanishing. Then one by one we stammer,—'The mayonnaise—'—'I wonder if the rolls are hot—'—'Cook's coffee is impossible,'—fade silently up the front stair, and scurry down the kitchen-way.
We cover the perishable gown with a huge white apron, we send up a fervent prayer for the costly shoes, and go where we are needed most.
We save the day for good coffee. With the precision of a juggler we rescue plates from the chambermaid, who is overcome by this introduction to the great world and dawdles contemplatively through the pantry door. Charmed with our proficiency, she stands by our side, and watches us clear a shelf of china in the twinkling of an eye. If she could find a stool, she would sit at our feet, making motion studies. But she couldn't find it if it were already there. She couldn't find anything. We order her back to the dining-room, where she takes up a strategic position by the window, from which she can idly survey the mob outside, and the hungry men within.
The last coffee-cup has passed through the doorway. Cigars and matches are circulating in the butler's capable hands. No more need for us.
We shed the enveloping aprons, disappear from the kitchen, and materialize again, elegantly useless, in the drawing-room. Nobody can say that luncheon wasn't hot and promptly served.
Chairs begin to clatter. They are rising from the table. A brass band outside bursts into being.
Brother had foretold that band to us, and we had expressed vivid doubts. He said it would cost eighty dollars. Now eighty dollars in itself is a respectable sum, a sum capable even of exerting some mild fascination, but eighty dollars viewed in relation to a band becomes merely ludicrous.
We said an eighty-dollar band was a thing innately impossible, like free-trade, or a dachshund. Brother attested that the next best grade of band would demand eight hundred. We justly caviled at eight hundred. We inquired, Why any band? Brother claimed that it would make a cheerful noise, and we yielded.