Aubrey laid down the carving-fork.

"No, I don't care for any."

"What time did you have your luncheon, dear?" I asked, anxiously.

"At half-past twelve. I had an appointment with Squires at one."

"And what did you have?" I continued, for Mary's face was expressive of the liveliest horror.

"A club sandwich and a gla.s.s of beer."

Mary looked at the clock. It was half-past eight.

"Oh, my dear!" I said, mournfully. "It is no wonder you can't eat. Your stomach is too exhausted to feel hunger."

Mary ran around the table for no reason at all. She took the cover off the best silver dish. It was a dish of fresh peas cooked with onions and lettuce. Pet.i.ts pois a la paysanne! I had taught her myself! I simply glared at it. To this day I can smell those onions!

"If I could have had those at seven o'clock," said Aubrey, sadly, "I could have eaten every one of them. They look delicious, Mary, but I really--no, don't urge me! Take the dinner off."

"Oh, boss dear, if you'd just take a lick at them!" implored Mary. "Just one lick--there's a handsome man!"

Aubrey bit his lips. I was trembling on the verge of hysterical laughter.

Mary implored in vain. With our famished eyes on the peas and chicken we saw them disappear through the swinging door. Mary in her agony was talking aloud.

"Keep it up!" whispered the Angel. "This will fetch her! She's ready to cry."

"Oh, but Aubrey," I moaned. "I'm ready to gnaw the napkin and eat my slippers. Please come and tighten my belt!"

"I know now how explorers and castaways feel," murmured the Angel. "For heaven's sake, what comes next?"

"Asparagus!" I wailed. "Fresh asparagus. I paid ninety cents for it!

And she's cooked it with her white sauce--oh!"

The door opened and Mary, with pink cheeks and dancing eyes, brought in and deposited before me my favourite dish. Asparagus on toast. I looked at it longingly, feverishly! I was famishing. My throat was dry and my eyes had a savage glare. I had heard of men going mad for want of food.

I know now how they felt.

At first I could not speak. I was obliged to swallow violently.

"There!" cried Mary, triumphantly. "You can't pa.s.s that up!"

"Alas!" I sighed, shaking my head. I looked at her and felt simply murderous. That white-haired old woman's obstinacy in not giving us our dinner on time was the cause of all my misery. I resolved to rub it in.

Her face was a study.

"Did you ever," I said, mournfully, "see me refuse asparagus before?"

"You're never going to refuse it!" exclaimed Mary, incredulously.

"Missis! I used a pint of cream, to say nothing of the b.u.t.ter! Why, it's a sin! It's a mortal sin in you not to try it! See, Missis, let me put a little on your plate. I'll feed it to you like as if you were a baby! I will indeed!"

"No," I said, clutching at the table-cloth to keep from falling upon that dish of asparagus and shovelling it down my throat in huge handfuls,--"no, I couldn't! Mary! I am too weak, really, I think I am starving!"

I leaned back and closed my eyes. The clock struck nine.

"You've had nothing to eat all day!" cried Mary. "You had only a bite for your lunch, and that was eight hours ago! Oh, Missis, dear! Ain't I the mean dog! Let me make you a cup of tea! Missis dear! In the name of G.o.d eat something! Do!"

"No," I said. "I have always been this way. If I go five minutes over the time when I expect my dinner, I feel just this way. I can't eat."

With which astonishing lie, I leaned back as if death were already looming up in the distance.

Mary made one more attack. Salad was the Angel's weak point as asparagus was mine, and Mary always made a dream of beauty out of it. She scorned "_fatiguer la laitue_" as the French do. Instead she kept it in a bowl of water until thoroughly "awake," as she called it. Then carefully examining each leaf separately, she tied them in a wet cloth and laid them "spang on the ice," which course of treatment rendered them so crisp that to cut them with a sharp salad-fork was always to get a little dressing splashed in one's eye. Furthermore she arranged them in the best cut-gla.s.s dish in symmetrical rows with the scarlet tomatoes tucked invitingly in the centre. She presented us with such a dish on this evening. Then when Aubrey (who will be remembered when he is no more, not for his moral qualities nor for his domestic virtues, but for the skill with which he used to mix a salad dressing) went to work and prepared one from tarragon, vinegar, oil, Nepaul pepper, paprika, black and cayenne pepper, to say nothing of plenty of salt,--words fail me! I simply pa.s.s away at the recollection.

I have never been able to make up my mind whether Mary suspected us or not. Of course we overdid the part, but it was a physical necessity. I can go without a thing altogether, but I cannot be moderate. I really thought I was not hungry until Aubrey told me not to eat, and that, of course, was enough to make any woman ravenous. If he had told me "to buck up and eat a good dinner," of course I could only have nibbled.

She broke out again, and pleaded hard for us to drink our coffee, but we were obdurate.

Finally we got up from the table and Mary removed the cloth, muttering to herself. I overheard some of it, but where any other cook would have been furious at us for not eating her delicious dinner, the dear old soul's rage was all directed against herself, and she was vituperating herself in language which would not have gone through the mails.

But now the question was where and how to get our dinner so that Mary would not suspect. To send her to church and forage in our own ice-box was out of the question, for she knows to a dot how much there is of everything, and I cannot take an olive that she does not miss it and come and ask me if I took it, to avert suspicion from the ice-man.

Furthermore, it we both went out, she might suspect. And we had taught her too heroic a lesson to go and spoil it by carelessness now.

"What shall we do?" murmured my husband.

"There's only one thing to do," I said, in low, even tones, with my book before my face. "Go out and buy something ready cooked,--something which leaves no trace,--something small enough to go into your overcoat pocket, but oh, in the name of heaven, get enough!"

Mary came in as the outer door slammed.

"Where's boss gone?" she demanded. Perhaps it was only my guilty conscience which made her tones sound suspicious.

"Just over to Columbus Avenue to get a paper," I said.

"Oh!"

I waited in a guilty and trembling silence for the Angel to return. What if Mary should take it into her head to come and help him off with his overcoat? She often did. I softly opened the outer door. If she didn't hear him enter, all would be well.

Presently he came up. He got out of the elevator stealthily, and I met him with my finger on my lip.

"Aren't you going to take off your hat?" I said, as he stole down the corridor.

"Can't!" he whispered. "I've got cream puffs in it."

I only waited to ward off an attack from the rear. I put my head in at the butler's pantry.

"Mary, I have such a headache that I am going to bed now, so be as quiet as you can, won't you?"

"I'll come and open the bed for you right this instantaneous minute, my poor dear child," she said, taking her hands out of the dish-water.

"No, I'll open it! I don't mind in the least," I said, eagerly.