I had always a great longing to go down in the kitchen and cook myself, but my father forbade this, saying that if I worried the cook she would probably give warning; and that, if in addition to my mother's illness and other present ills (of which I fear my housekeeping was one) we were left without a cook, he should not know what to do. This was a sore disappointment, for as yet I had never been able to make any attempt at cooking, except on one occasion, when at the age of six I had been discovered surreptitiously frying chocolate creams on the shovel in the dining-room, for which I was sent to bed. At a yet earlier period, having heard somewhere that toffee was made with butter and sugar, I put a small pat of butter and a tablespoonful of sugar into an empty sweet-box, and, hiding it amongst my toys, waited with anxiety for it to turn into toffee, looking in the box with keen interest every morning and hoping for the joyful day when the sticky mess should become a neat brown slab of finest toffee; a day, alas, which came not, as was not strange, and the end of it was that the nurse found the hidden treasure and promptly threw it away. To come back to "The Rowans," where Marion, having finished her morning's cooking, is reading a letter in the sitting-room. The letter is from an old playmate, now grown up and lately married, who is living on the other side of London. "Tulse Hill, "Jan. 10th. "MY DEAR MARION,--Do not look for any interesting news in this letter, and make up your mind to exercise all your good nature. "I am writing to you for advice and consolation, for I am at my wits' end. How I wish I were a clever housekeeper, like you, and how I envy the Orlingburys for having secured you to live with them. I should so like to run over for a chat, but you are such a busy woman, I do not know when I should find you at home without disturbing you in your work, and it would be too bad to make you talk business on your only holiday--Saturday. Do tell me, Marion--in the strictest confidence--are you afraid of your servant? I am of mine--horribly! Oh, dear me! When I first married I thought I was going to do wonders; to do such a lot of cooking, and to manage and contrive so cleverly. Let me explain a few of my troubles. "To begin with, I have a cook who was recommended to me as 'a perfect treasure,' but I do not find her any sort of a treasure, and I am happy to say she is now leaving. She has a terribly superior manner, and resents it very much if I go into the kitchen at all. On days when I have attempted to do any cooking she is frigid beyond words. She is not a good cook herself--I could put up with a great deal if she were that--and the only things we have that are nice at all are curries and fricassees made in the stewing jar after your fashion. I heard about the jar about a month ago from a mutual friend--your Aunt Anne.