The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives.

by Elizabeth Strong Worthington.

I

"Girls, come to order!" shouted Hilda Bretherton in a somewhat disorderly tone.

"How can we come to order without a president?" queried a rosy-cheeked, roly-poly damsel answering to the name of Puddy Kennett.

"I elect Prue Shaftsbury!" screamed Hilda above the merry din of voices.

"You can't elect--you simply nominate," said Prue.

"I second the motion," said Nannie Branscome, and her remark was instantly followed by a storm of "ayes" before they were called for, and the president was declared elected and proceeded to take her seat.

"Young ladies," said she, "we are met to consider a scandalous----"

"Scurrilous," suggested Hilda.

"----alarming article," continued the president, "ent.i.tled 'How to Cook Wives.'"

"Here! here!" interrupted Hilda again, "we can't do anything until we've elected officers and appointed committees."

"Out of a club of four members?" queried Prudence.

"Certainly. Mother said that yesterday at her club, out of eight women they elected twelve officers and appointed seven committees of three each. Why, you know two men can't meet on a street corner without immediately forming a secret society, electing president, vice-president, secretary, and treasurer, and appointing a committee of five to get up a banquet."

"But to return to the subject," persisted the president--a long-faced girl with a solemn countenance, but a suspicious gleam in her eye.

"'How to Cook Wives'--that is the question before the house."

"'How to Cook Wives!' Well, if that isn't rich! It makes me think of the old English nursery song--'Come, ducky, come and be killed.' Now it will be, 'Come, ducky, come and be cooked.' I move that Congress be urged to enact a law adopting that phrase as the only legal form of proposal. Then if any little goose accepts she knows what to expect, and is not caught up and fried without foreknowledge."

"Young ladies," said the president.

"Don't mow me down in my prime," urged Hilda in an injured tone. "I'm making my maiden speech in the house."

"Oh, girls, look, quick!" cried Puddy. "See Miss Leigh. Isn't that a fetching gown she has on?"

The entire club rushed to the window.

"Who's she with?" asked Hilda. "He's rather fetching, too."

"I believe his name is Chance," said Puddy Kennett. "He's not a society fellow."

"Oh, he's the chum of that lovely man," said Hilda.

"Which lovely man?" asked Prue. "There are so many of them."

"Why--oh, you know his name. I can't think of it--Loveland--Steve Loveland. We met him at Constance Leigh's one evening."

Here Nannie Branscome colored, but no one noticed her.

"Young ladies, come to order," said the president.

"Or order will come to you," said Hilda. "Prue has raised her parasol--gavel, I mean."

"There goes Amy Frisbe," remarked Puddy from her post by the window.

"Do you know her engagement's off?"

"Well, I'll be jig----" Hilda began.

"Sh-h!" said the president.

"The president objects to slang, but I'll still be jiggered, as Lord Fauntleroy's friend remarked."

"Sh-h!" said the president.

"Girls, that reminds me," said Puddy. "I met a publisher from New York at the opera last night who objected to the slightest slang."

"Oh, me!" exclaimed Hilda. "Why, where has Mother Nature been keeping the dear man all these years?"

"On Mr. Sheldon's editorial staff," suggested Nannie Branscome.

"Oh, that's too bad, Nannie," exclaimed Prudence. "My father--and he's not a religious man--said the Topeka _Capital_ was a wonderful paper Sheldon's week."

"I'm not denying that," said Nannie. "I believe it was wonderful. I believe and tremble."

"With other little----"

"Sh-h!" said the president, and Hilda subsided.

"Was Amy Frisbe at the opera last night?" asked Puddy rather irrelevantly.

"No," said Hilda, "but Arthur Driscol was. He sat in a box with the Gorman party and was devoted to Mamie Moore all the evening. If I'd been Mrs. Gorman I'd dropped him over the railing."

"You don't mean that Amy Frisbe has been jilted?" exclaimed the president.

"I do, and it's her third serious heart wound. Really, that girl is ent.i.tled to draw a pension."

"Well, I'll be jig----" began Nannie.

"Sh-h!" said the president, and then she added: "Young ladies, it is for you to decide how you'll be served up in future."

"_Is_ it for us to decide?" asked Nannie Branscome.

She had a peculiar way of saying things of this sort. She would lower her head and look out from under her head frizzles in a non-committal fashion, but with a suggestion of something that made her piquant, bewitching face irresistible.