"Don't, please. It is all right now. I'm just telling you what _did_ happen, so that you can sympathize with me. I've been through it all--alone. She then told me that while salt-cellars on a dinner table were unnecessary, _bonbonnières_ filled with dainty candy were rigidly called for. When she saw our _bonbonnières_, she and Leonie turned quietly aside. You remember, Archie, they were theater souvenirs that Aunt Julia gave us. One celebrated the one hundredth performance of _The Masqueraders_, the other the fiftieth performance of _The Girl With the Green Eyes_. I really felt quite abject. I--I--positively longed for--for Mrs. Potzenheimer." Poor Letitia! It was cruel. Gladly would I have spared her such chagrin. "I don't think she meant to cause me pain," she went on. "She is merely swell, and she seemed to wonder why we, who lacked these luxuries, had engaged so expensive a culinary artist. Perhaps it was natural, but--I really couldn't put myself in her place, though it must have been much more comfortable than _mine_! I was glad when the silver inspection was over. It wouldn't have been so bad if I had been alone with Madame, but Leonie was there, like a hateful echo, and that made it so fearfully trying. Next, I had to introduce her to the glass. Oh!" I dreaded to hear about the glass. What would she think of my tumblers, at ninety-six cents a dozen, bought to replace the wedding present that Potzenheimer and Birdie had smashed between them! "She asked to see the cut-glass," said Letitia, and this time there was a wan smile on her lips. "I felt that she would indeed be extraordinarily clever--in fact, _clairvoyante_--if she _could_ see the cut-glass, for I couldn't. There was the decanter, that was cut-glass only as to the stopper, and there was the salad-bowl, that is merely near-cut-glass. When she saw the tumblers"--I winced--"I really thought that she would throw them out of the window. 'Even _vin ordinaire_ would be tasteless in them,' she said. 'I should like to see the best tumblers, those that you use for dinner parties, and on state occasions.'" Letitia came to a standstill, as though she had at last reached the meeting of the waters and was pausing before tackling the conflict. "Just then, Archie, it occurred to me," she said slowly, "that nothing--nothing could save us but a good, big, carefully conceived, well-directed, artistic, whopping lie!" "That's right!" I cried viciously. "I forgive you beforehand." "Why should we be intimidated by a cook?" she asked oratorically. "I asked myself that, and I could find no answer. Here we were about to ruin ourselves to give this woman employment, being cross-examined by her, as though we were prisoners at the bar. Moreover, it was a case of two to one--she and Leonie against me! So I remained quiet for a few moments, as I came to the conclusion that nobody could cope with all this but a really beautiful, unabashed liar!"