So interested were we, that we never noticed how the soup got away. Yet it did, and I suddenly perceived before me an appetizing dish of fried smelts, nestling beside a silver receptacle containing a _sauce tartare_. It was marvelous. It was as though a conjurer had cried, "Presto!"--and behold the metamorphosis! The fish was delicious and Aunt Julia enjoyed it quite as much as we did. "I'm very fond of my own cooking," she said. "I take a scientific interest in it. I like to see what one can do with various foods. I love experiments. I have the same interest in a _sauce tartare_ that--er--Sir Oliver Lodge has in radium. One is born that way, I suppose." I continued to expand. How could I help it? Aunt Julia seemed suddenly transfigured. She was no longer the fussy old meddler, but the Good Samaritan. I liked her silk dress, her lace collar, her antique cameo brooch, and with every glass of sauterne that I took, I liked them better! It was quite wonderful how they grew upon me. Letitia seemed to be equally effervescent. I quite forgot her lack of evening dress, in which she had been so resplendently imperious at Anna Carter's delicatessen spread. This was a meal at which evening dress would have been perfectly appropriate, but this meal, alas! was born of no cook's efforts. It was original. Perhaps we scarcely dared to hope for its repetition. And as this thought occurred to me, I sighed. The chicken was roasted to perfection, and its dressing was almost poetic. An epicure would have delighted in it. Brillat-Savarin, himself, would have commented favorably. Aunt Julia explained that she had not tried to display any particularly "fancy" cooking, but she opined that this was sufficient to remove satisfactorily the edge from the ordinarily unfastidious appetite. How I had wronged her! How different was the reality to the anticipation of boiled mutton and stewed prunes! We finished with a firm and convincing jelly, and some of the best black coffee I have ever tasted outside of Paris. It was the first comfortable meal we had enjoyed at home! It was the first time we had ever sat at our own table, to arise therefrom at peace with the world! "And now," said the old lady solemnly, "you two young people may go into the parlor--oh, I beg your pardon, I mean drawing-room--and your squalid aunt will clear the things away. She will be with you in fifteen minutes, ready to preach, or answer questions, or do anything you like." Home certainly did seem like home. The drawing-room was cozy and inviting. I felt stimulated to mental effort. Letitia had forgotten her ailments, and was lively and amusing. "I must try and learn Aunt Julia's system," she said, "so that I can at any rate, supervise, though, Archie, I'm quite sure that frauds like Anna Carter, or Potzenheimer, or Birdie Miriam would never brook supervision."