“I suppose his cooking, like Jeanie’s fishing, was just an accident.”
“No, indeed! Good cooking has to be learned,” I said, “and this picture makes me think of the first fish I had to cook, and what a foolish girl I had.”
“Oh, mamma’s going to tell us a story about when she was a girl,” Jeanie exclaims. So all take seats—Jeanie on my lap, the boys on the two arms of my chair, and the three little sisters on chairs or footstools.
Not about when I was a girl, but about when I was a very young wife.
You boys know that I had always lived in a big house in the city, where the servants did all the cooking and such work, while I practiced music or studied or visited my Sunday-school scholars. I was just as fond of them in those days as I am now. Well! Your papa took me to a dear little house, far, far away, near Lake George. I had a very young girl to help me about the house, who did not know any thing about cooking. I thought I knew a good deal, for I had learned to bake bread, and roast meat and make a cup of tea or coffee. I had just as much fun keeping house in that little cottage as Jeanie has playing house up stairs. But one day papa went off in a hurry and forgot to ask me what I wanted for dinner. He was to bring a gentleman home that day and I hoped he would send me a good dinner.
About ten o’clock Annie, my little servant, came to me and said, “Oh, ma’am, the butcher’s here with a beautiful fish the master has sent for the meat.”
“A fish! Annie, do you know how to cook fish?” I said.
“No, ma’am. Only it’s fried they mostly has ’em.”
I went into the kitchen and there lay a beautiful trout—too pretty to eat, it seemed to me. Certainly too pretty to be spoiled by careless cooking. So I took my receipt book and after reading carefully, I stuffed the pretty fish and laid him in a pan all ready for the oven, and told Annie to put it in at eleven o’clock.
I was pretty tired, so I lay down for a little nap, and had just dropped asleep when Annie came into the room, wringing her hands and saying, “Oh, ma’am! Oh, ma’am! What’ll I do in the world?”