"Archie," said Letitia solemnly, laying down the paper, "I feel intuitively that Mrs. McCaffrey is our fate. I read fifty advertisements while you were trying--I mean while you were eating" (I winced), "and I felt a warm, rushy sensation when I came to the name of Mrs. McCaffrey. I believe it was telepathy, from 33 Sixth Avenue." "Let me look at the advertisement." I took the paper, and read the portentous lines that Letitia had almost intoned. Then I re-read it. "I suppose that she means to bring the child with her," I suggested ruefully. "That is the catch, Letitia. We do want a cook, but we don't want a child--at least hers." "But, Archie, dear," said Letitia seriously, "we have none of our own." "How _could_ we have?" I cried, amazed and indignant. "We won't argue that point," declared my wife, quite unruffled. "The fact is, Archie, that we haven't any children, whatever you may say, and however much you may argue. Under the circumstances, I don't object to a cook with a child. In fact, I quite like the idea. She will be very much steadier and less frivolous, and--Archie, I love children. I like their prattle, and their cunning little ways, and--" "But," I interrupted, catching at a straw with the zest of a drowning man, "you notice that she wants to go into the service of a family with Christian principles. Now, I don't propose to saddle myself with Christian principles for the sake of my cook. I positively decline. What difference on earth it can possibly make to a cook whether she broil a steak for Buddhists, or Mohammedans, or Christian Scientists, or Swedenborgians--or even, for the Salvation Army, I can't imagine. Religion in the kitchen is just a bit far-fetched. I consider that advertisement most insulting, Letitia." "Archie, really, you--" "And I suppose," I went on, wound up, "that we should have to sing hymns with her every night and perhaps go to church with her on Sunday. I won't lend myself to such new-fangled notions. Cook is a question of dinner and not of religious belief. Besides, how could she know what our principles were? We might be atheists, and still inform her that we had Christian principles! I dare say that if we objected to her cooking, she would say we were not Christians, and if we protested at her going out more than eight times a week, she would declare that we were heathens. The child is bad enough, but the Christian principles are worse. I'm sorry, Letitia, but this advertisement is really a mass of palpable loopholes." Tears came to Letitia's eyes. They seemed to be frequently in abeyance there nowadays, and they grieved me.