As a matter of fact, everything turned out quite differently. Ruth prepared nothing the day before; she rose late on the morning of the engagement, and omitted to clean the flues. We had a terrific fire going all day, and she ran about the kitchen at top speed, purple in the face, trembling and uncomplimentary. Far from the two hours of peaceful sleep anticipated by the “Book of the Home,” she had not even time to wash up after luncheon, and, as it was, dinner was more than ten minutes late. It is sad, but remarkable, that nothing ever happens to me in the way that books and efficient people claim as a certainty; but I am sure that Ruth enjoyed the dinner more than Mrs. Beeton ever enjoyed anything. You lose half the fun of a dish if you know beforehand what it is going to look like. The range, with his unfailing common sense and utter lack of artistic feeling, behaved strictly in accordance with his flues, slightly undercooking some things and burning others just a trifle: but the ice was perfect. I have often made ices in the same way, and they have turned out failures, which just proves what I have always said, that cookery books are written in the same spirit as “The Home Conjurer,” “Every Man His Own Chauffeur,” “How to Become a Golf Champion by Post,” and so on. The people who write them do not want us to know how they do the things, so they keep us harmlessly employed with a few simple rules while they themselves go on cooking and conjuring and get paid for it. Ruth, Clara, the charwoman, and a borrowed housemaid sat up until twelve washing dishes, breaking a few, and filling the air with hilarity born of tea, fatigue, and insufficient food. But Ruth was happy. We had had company and she had been at her wits’ end. _CHAPTER VI_: THE JOB GARDENER After all I had suffered at the hands of Elizabeth Tique’s gardener I determined not to keep one at all. That is the kind of resolution one makes, judging a whole class from a single specimen, and then buying experience. But it seemed to me that just as a cook is too pervasive in a small house, so a gardener occupies too much space in a small garden. I remembered the mowing machine, and the manure, and one thing and another, and thought how much enjoyment I should get from doing the garden myself, with the help of an occasional man. I did not know that in our neighbourhood that particular breed of garden pest is called a Saturday scratcher. If I had heard the term sooner I might have guessed what he would be like, but I engaged one in my innocence, and bought experience like other people. I engaged him on the recommendation of an enemy, and he tramped over the flower-beds to my door early one morning. He was just the sort of working man who gets caricatured on the music-hall stage: infinitely ugly and full of inane conversation. His opening remark annoyed me. “Pretty little bit o’ garden you’ve got ’ere mum.”