Mrs. Roberts: “I didn’t want you to know it, Amy. I thought you would be troubled if you knew you were coming to visit me just when I was trying to break in a new cook, and so I told Edward not to let Willis know. Go on, Willis.” Mrs. Campbell: “And I understand just how you felt about it, Agnes; you knew he’d laugh. Go on, Willis.” Campbell: “And she sent her down here, and told Roberts to keep her till she came herself.” Both Ladies: “Well?” Campbell: “And I found poor old Roberts here, looking out for a cook that he’d never seen before, and expecting to recognize a woman that he’d never met in his life.” He explodes in another fit of laughter. The ladies stare at him in mystification. Mrs. Roberts: “I would have stayed myself to meet her, but I’d left my plush bag with my purse in it at Stearns’s, and I had to go back after it.” Mrs. Campbell: “She _had_ to leave him. What is there to laugh at?” Mrs. Roberts: “I see nothing to laugh at, Willis.” Campbell, sobered: “You _don’t_?” Both Ladies: “No.” Campbell: “Well, by Jove! Then perhaps you don’t see anything to laugh at in Roberts’s having to guess who the cook was; and going up to the wrong woman, and her getting mad, and going out and bringing back her little fiery-red tipsy Irishman of a husband, that wanted to fight Roberts; and my having to lie out of it for him; and their going off again, and the husband coming back four or five times between drinks, and having to be smoothed up each time--” Both Ladies: “No!” Mrs. Roberts: “It was simply horrid.” Mrs. Campbell: “It wasn’t funny at all; it was simply disgusting. Poor Mr. Roberts!” Campbell: “Well, by the holy poker! This knocks me out! The next time I’ll marry a man, and have somebody around that can appreciate a joke. The Irishman said himself it would make a cow laugh.” Mrs. Campbell: “I congratulate you on being of the same taste, Willis. And I dare say you tried to heighten the absurdity, and add to poor Mr. Roberts’s perplexity.” Roberts: “No, no! I assure you, Amy, if it hadn’t been for Willis, I shouldn’t have known how to manage. I was quite at my wits’ end.” Mrs. Campbell: “You are very generous, I’m sure, Mr. Roberts; and I suppose I shall have to believe _you_.” Roberts: “But I couldn’t act upon the suggestion to take the man out and treat him; Willis was convinced himself, I think, that that wouldn’t do. But I confess I was tempted.” Mrs. Roberts: “Treat him?” Roberts: “Yes. He was rather tipsy already; and Willis thought he would be more peaceable perhaps if we could get him quite drunk; but I really couldn’t bring my mind to it, though I was so distracted that I was on the point of yielding.” Both Ladies: “Willis!” Mrs. Roberts: “You wanted poor Edward to go out and drink with that wretched being, so as to get him into a still worse state?” Mrs. Campbell: “You suggested that poor Mr. Roberts should do such a thing as that? Well, Willis!”