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Show ijiijg LDFE WHTI JIM BMI B7Geo. v. Hobart i 1 I MfiM ON HOME Dinners lyou ever get ready kove into a new ent? Take it from occupation that burning of Rome - election-night bon- to talk harshly ie day when I recov-jf recov-jf three fingers, dis-by dis-by the unexpected folding door which Ssly refused to fold, here we are in the nest" that Peaches Jout so canaryishly &eks before we final- Sinto this tenement pie are in "the nest" lifferent tune, poor hhe finds it mighty l& high C of joy jis to put in eight-pi, eight-pi, day waiting for liter to be fixed, and; jfer to be turned on,' introduced to the if door, and all the JjjBbd and one pre-ofbKnises, pre-ofbKnises, so earnestly eagerly unkept. Helga floated into the room clad in a low-neck gown. Now we come to the plot of the piece. Peaches invited a few friends to a house-warming dinner and an hour after they had vociferously vocifer-ously accepted our cook got mad because she found out the Persian rug on her boudoir floor was made in New J ersey, and quit left us flat with a bunch of friends on our hands who had already gone in training for a long heavy feed, catch-as-catch-can, strangle-hold barred, but go to the mat with everything from clams to the printer's name. For twenty-four hours Peaches Peach-es spent her time hurrying between be-tween the intelligence offices and the depths of despair, and that dinner party began to look like cold turkey. And the next day, just as I was about to send out the S. 0. S. signals, a tramp cook arrived ar-rived with the milkman, prepared pre-pared to pour oil on our troubled trou-bled kitchen stove. The name of the new cook was Helga. She was half Swede and, half deaf. Peaches asked her for her recommendations, and Helga said that her only recommendation recommenda-tion was her face but that she tripped the night before and broke it just above the chin. Peaches engaged her what else could she do with kind and loving friends eager to exercise our silverware and gurgling their hunger at our outer walls? Helga was shown to her room. She kicked a little because there wasn't a southern exposure but subsided when Peaches promised prom-ised her a bunch of fresh cut flowers every morning. Then the procession started for the kitchen, halting for a moment in the butler's pantry so that Helga could inform herself as to whether we . voted the Prohibition Prohibi-tion or Progressive ticket. Helga discovered four bottles of beer coyly reposing on the ice in the refrigerator, whereupon where-upon her face became lighted up with the joys of anticipation and she rushed out and embraced em-braced the gas stove. When, later on, Peaches joined me in the front room she looked woe-begone and frightened. fright-ened. "It's an awful risk," she sighed; "I feel that the friendship friend-ship of years may be interrupted interrupt-ed because we have a new and uncertain cook in the kitchen do you get me, John ?" "Sure!" I said; "but what are we going to do about it, kid? It's too late to cancel our bookings book-ings now. These friends of ours have been saving up their hunger hun-ger for three days. We can't send them a buttered biscuit on a postal card and pass them up. Let's go through with it and hope for the best maybe Hel- ga is a good cook." "I'm afraid not, John," Peaches moaned. "She picked up a bowl of radishes just now and said ehe thought strawberries strawber-ries were out of season. When I asked her if she knew how to cook chicken-a-la-ldng she wanted want-ed to know which king Denmark Den-mark or Germany I" During the rest of the day Peaches worried so much about the new cook that she almost had an attack of nervous postponement. post-ponement. She walked around the apartment with her fingers crossed, murmuring little prayers pray-ers to herself and making wishes wish-es that Helga's idea of potato salad wouldn't turn out to be imitation chop suey. Our guests arrived promptly and we could see from their eager ea-ger faces that they'd fight that dinner to a finish. Under ordinary conditions the arrival of friends with hearty appetites is a compliment to be cherished, but with a visitation like Helga in the kitchen, likely at any moment to kick over the can containing the milk of human hu-man kindness, I felt like eight cents worth of God-help-iiB. The ladies in the party began to chat pleasantly while .they sized up our furniture out of the corners of their eyes, and the men glanced carelessly around to see if I had a box of cigars which could be attended to after af-ter dinner. At least I imagined that's what they were doing having qualified as a bum sport from the moment Helga began to rehearse re-hearse a dishrag. Presently dinner was an- Helga said that her only recommendation was her face. nounced and the s entire cast jumped to their feet as though they'd stepped on a third rail. The first round was oyster cocktails and everybody drew cards. This was Helga's maiden effort ef-fort at oyster cocktails and she had original ideas about the cocktail, consisting chiefly of salad oil and tabasco. The salad oil came from Italy, consequently the oysters were extremely foreign to the taste. After exploring her cocktail glass with a fork Mrs. Fitzen-staatz Fitzen-staatz politely inquired if we raised our own oysters, but just then a gill of tabasco struck Mr. Fitzenstaatz between the thorax tho-rax and the epiglottis and he spent the rest of the evening screaming for the fire department. depart-ment. The next round was mock turtle tur-tle soup, but nobody under the wide canopy of Heaven can ever guess where Helga found the mock. Sometimes I think I may have surprised her secret because later on when I looked for my rubber boots one of them was missing. Then we had fish blue fish. It had arrived in the kitchen just a simple, plain, kind-hearted fish with the blues, but after watching Helga's work it had developed acute melancholia. Then came the roast turkey, and right here was where Helga stepped to the footlights and clamored for the Victoria Cross. Peaches had told Helga to stuff the turkey with chestnuts, but Helga was firm in her belief be-lief that a chestnut is an old wheeze, so she stuffed the turkey tur-key with peanut brittle. Helga had noticed several other things around the kitchen which appeared to be bored and lonely, so she stuffed them in the turkey one of which was the corkscrew. When I started to carve the turkey the first thing I struck was a horseshoe which Helga had put in for luck. It made Peaches extremely nervous to see the can-opener, a pair of scissors and seven clothespins come out of the interior in-terior of that turkey, but when Mrs. Fitzenstaatz said that their latest cook had tried to stuff their last turkey with the garden hose friend wife felt better. The next round was some salad sal-ad which Helga had dressed in the kitchen, but the dress was such a bad fit that nobody would speak of it. Then we had some homemade home-made ice cream for dessert. The ice was very good, but Helga forgot to add the cream. Consequently it tasted rather insipid. Then came the last round and the knockout. Helga had been told to serve the coffee, "demi tasse." When the cue came, Helga floated in the room clad in a low-neck gown such as the merry-merries wear in the Bal Tabarin scene in the second act just before the police break in. Then she splashed down in front of all assembled a cup of brown cough mixture and floated float-ed out again, while Peaches turned red, white and blue and I had all I could do to keep from becoming a murderer. It afterwards transpired that in the shredded wheat which Helga was using as a brain the words "demi tasse" and "decollete" "decol-lete" had become mixed, and, having taken the low-neck as a souvenir of a former employer, she had decided "demi tasse" meant "Enter from kitchen, smilingly, with anatomical display; dis-play; place coffee on table, center, cen-ter, and exit, showing vertebrae." verte-brae." However, the housewarming dinner came to a finish without! any casualties and the guests went home, hungry but un-! poisoned. The next morning Peaches gave Helga Helga and she left us abruptly, followed by the prayers of all present, including the gas stove. The only thing about the jH house that loved Helga was a diamond brooch belonging to Peaches and it followed Helga IH out into the land of adventure. jH We've made up our minds, friend wife and I have, that we'll give no more dinners till we get a cook who knows the difference between breaded IH lamb chops and the coal scuttle. 9H Even the friendship of a life-time life-time isn't proof against a brass key-ring in the stomach, which lies there, tossing restlessly for weeks and weeks, sometimes. P. S. Helga's contract called for $35.00 per month, Sundays jH and Thursday evening out, and nix on the wash. Have you a little fairy in your home? (Copyright, 1913, by tho McClurc .N'cwspa- por Syndicate.) jH (AH Stage Rights Reserved by the . Author.) . |
