Cooks -- Fiction; Household employees -- Fiction; Housekeeping -- Fiction; Married people -- Fiction
She read on, and on--and still on. "Banquets, too, with the tables
arranged, afford an introduction; there is something there besides wine
for you to look for. Full oft does blushing Cupid, with his delicate
arms, press the soothed horns of Bacchus there present. And when the
wine has besprinkled the soaking wings of Cupid, there he remains and
stands overpowered on the spot of his capture. He, indeed, quickly
flaps his moistened wings, but still it is fatal for the breast to be
sprinkled by love. Wine composes the feeling--"
The clock struck ten. I interrupted Letitia rather irrelevantly. "My
dear girl," I said, "I hate to be so prosaic, but I really feel horribly
empty."
She looked at me rather oddly, I thought. "You feel empty?" she queried;
"what an atrocious expression, Archie. If you mean by that, that you are
hungry--"
"I am, Letitia, ravenously hungry. In fact, I feel quite faint. I can't
think of Ovid, but only of supper. Oh, Letitia, a team of deviled
kidneys--"
"Don't," she cried, "don't. I can't bear it. Isn't it disgraceful,
Archie? I, too, am simply starving. It must be that bracing atmosphere
of Niagara. It has made plow-boys of us. Never before have I felt that
Ovid was a trifle--er--inadequate. Yet we have dined, Archie. We have
partaken of a delicatessen dinner. We ate everything--"
"I believe," I said feverishly, "that there was a little bread left. We
did not eat the entire loaf, Letitia. I am quite sure that there was a
heel--a crust--on the table. It caught my eye. Shall we--shall we go and
see?"
We went back to the dining-room, _not_ arm-in-arm. And truly enough, we
discovered that half a loaf was indeed better than no bread. I cut the
crust in two and nobly gave Letitia the larger piece--nobly, but I am
bound to say, enviously. Once more I felt relieved that there were no
camera fiends to intrude upon our privacy. Letitia, in her _décolleté_
pink silk gown, eating dry bread with a famished expression, seemed
unconventional. So did I, as I buried my teeth in the fresh, crisp
crust. There was no butter. Had there been butter,--well, we should
merely have eaten it. We drank some more of that nice cool water, that
bubbled as I poured it from the pitcher with uplifted hand.
"And now, dear," I said, "as I am going to be hungry again in five
minutes--I feel it coming on--I think I'll go to bed, and forget it."
"We--we--can't go to bed yet," murmured Letitia, "we must wait for Anna.
She has no latch-key, and can't get in--"
"Can't get in?" I exclaimed--and I'm afraid I was testy--"surely she
intends to conform to the rules of all well-appointed establishments--"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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