Mrs. O'Toole was sixty years old. She had been a cook, she informed us, for thirty-five years. That time she had apparently devoted to the art of learning how to learn nothing. All she could do was to stew prunes. It had taken her thirty-five years to acquire the knack. I could have stewed the universe in less time. She was most amiable, but had never heard of the most ordinary dishes that the most ordinary people affect. Like Mistress Anna Carter, she had infinite belief in the delicatessen curse--in the cooked-up rubbish that unfortunates throw down their luckless throats--in the instinct that prompts savages to eat earth. We called in Aunt Julia (poor Aunt Julia! I don't hate her nearly as much now!), in the hope that she might be able to teach Mrs. O'Toole a few rudimentary things, and as cook seemed so affable, we reasoned that she would probably be very glad to learn. But, bless your heart, Mrs. O'Toole had a soul above the sordid question of acquiring culinary knowledge. Aunt Julia cooked and Mrs. O'Toole let her cook! "If you will just watch me, Mrs. O'Toole," said Aunt Julia politely, "I'm sure you will be able to make this dish to-morrow." The cook-lady laughed in sheer light-heartedness. "Sure, mum," she said, "I've been thirty-five years without knowing how to make it, and I'm still alive. I've buried a husband and seven children, and have had a good time without all them new-fangled notions." It was hopeless. Mrs. O'Toole hummed _The Wearing o' the Green_ for the sake of her nationality, and took out her knitting. She was most good-tempered and pleasant about it, but she had no yearning to learn how to cook. Yet she must have had a ferociously arduous time in learning how _not_ to cook. She was charmingly familiar with us both--a real good soul with a rooted objection to the kitchen. "Yet some of these silly Guilds," said Letitia, "announce that they are going to teach women how to cook. How can they teach women who won't learn? My opinion is that the Guilds would have much quicker pupils if they promised to teach them how to loop the loop." Mrs. O'Toole was so jovial that I could almost see her looping the loop at Coney Island, and hear her emitting shrieks of Hibernian jollity as she hung head downward in that delightful institution. But I could not--and did not--see her cooking a dinner and laying a table. She went with as much good humor as she came. We kept her in our midst for a month, not because we wanted her for culinary purposes, but because she seemed able to sit in the kitchen, while we went out to dinner. She was both sober and honest, and had probably generally spent an innocuous month in every place. During a service of thirty-five years she must have graced four hundred and twenty places. Admitting, at a low average, three people to each household, she had therefore catered to twelve hundred and sixty appetites! It was an inspiring thought.