IV
AS TO A SMALL DINNER

It was sad but true. Mr. and Mrs. Idiot had invited Mr. Whitechoker and Mr. and Mrs. Pedagog and the Poet to dinner, and for some reason or another the cook had taken wings unto herself and flown, and the guests were expected within two hours.

"I see now," said the Idiot, "why they call it taking French leave. Nobody who doesn't understand French understands it. If it wasn't French, or if somebody would translate it for us, we might be able to comprehend it; as it is, it is one of the mysteries, and, as usual, we must make the best of it. Life, after all, my dear, consists largely of making the best of things."

"Well, I'm sure I don't know what to do," said Mrs. Idiot, despairfully, "unless you telegraph them all not to come, and tell them why."

"It is too late to do that," said the Idiot, looking at his watch. "They've probably all left home by this time. Poets and clergymen and old people like Mr. and Mrs. Pedagog always do start an hour too early, for fear of missing their train."

"I wouldn't care so much about the Poet," said Mrs. Idiot; "he doesn't know enough about housekeeping, anyhow, to make it matter. But Mr. Whitechoker and Mr. and Mrs. Pedagog – I simply can't ask them to camp out, as it were. The very fact that Mrs. Pedagog would become sympathetic immediately she learned what had happened would in itself be unbearable."

"I thought women liked sympathy?" said the Idiot, with a proper manifestation of surprise.

"So they do; but you might just as well talk about claret as meaning one thing as of sympathy being all of the same brand," Mrs. Idiot answered. "Certain kinds of claret are insufferable – sour and heady. I suppose there are sixty different kinds."

"Sixty-two," said the Idiot, blandly. "The sixty you mean and two more whose names I have forgotten."

"I wish you would be serious for a moment," Mrs. Idiot retorted, with as near an approach to irritation as was possible to one of her amiable disposition. "And it's just the same way with sympathy," she continued; "Mrs. Pedagog will lay this whole trouble to my inexperience. Probably she never had a servant take French leave in her life on the eve of a dinner-party."

"I'll bet she didn't," said the Idiot. "And for why? Because she never gave a dinner-party in all her life. The habits of early life cling unto old age, and even as in her early days as a boarding-house keeper she never gave anything, so now she doubtless considers giving a dinner as a reckless waste of opportunity. And she is quite right. Does a lawyer invite his friends to join him in an opinion? Never. Does Mr. Tiffany request Mr. and Mrs. Idiot to accept a diamond tiara given in their honor? Not. Does a true poet, with three names on his autograph, give a poem to anybody when he can sell it? Not if he knows it. Why, then, expect a landlady, by birth and previous training, to give a dinner?"

"I notice," said Mrs. Idiot, severely, "that you are always willing to give your views!"

"Precisely, my dear, and that proves my point," replied the Idiot, amiably. "I am not a professional viewer, and I am not a photographer by trade. Therefore, why should I not give my views? But really," he added, "I wouldn't bother; it'll all come out right. I don't know just how, but I am confident we shall have the most glorious dinner of our lives. When I was down cellar this morning looking at the gas-meter I saw two big boxes full of potatoes, a can of French pease, and a bottle of sarsaparilla, and if they don't like what they get it will be because they are exacting. And I'll wager you from what I know of their manners that if you gave them dried apples, cold tongue, and milk they'd say it was the most delightful repast they ever sat down to."

"But I'd know they didn't mean it," said Mrs. Idiot, smiling in spite of her woe.

"And that brings up the question, why should your conscience be troubled by the insincerity of others?" said he. "Now, I'll tell you what we'll do. You fry the potatoes and I'll boil the can of pease; I think four minutes will boil them hard, like an egg, and together we'll put the sarsaparilla on ice, and bluff the whole thing through. Bluffing was always my strong point, and I have noticed, my dear, that in whatever I have tried to do since we were married you have contributed at least ninety per cent. to success. My bluff plus your efforts to make the thing a go will send our dinner to a premium."

Mrs. Idiot remained properly silent. As a matter of fact, she was not even listening. She was considering. What on earth to do was the question in her mind, and it so entirely absorbed it that she fortunately had little left for the rather easy views of the Idiot himself.

"What is a dinner, anyhow?" the Idiot added, after the silence had to his mind become oppressive. "Is it a mere meal? Do the Poet and Mr. and Mrs. Pedagog and Mr. Whitechoker come here merely to get something to eat? Or do they come for the pleasure of our society, or for the pleasure of leaving home, or what? As I understand it, people go out to dine not because they have not a sufficiency of food at home, but because they wish to meet other people. That's what I do. I can always have something better to eat at home than I can get at somebody else's house; and furthermore, it is a more natural meal. Dinners generally are made up of pretty little things that nobody likes, and have no sustenance in them. A successful dinner lies not in successful cooking, but in pleasing conversation. Wherefore, it is not the cook, but the host and hostess who make a failure or a success of a dinner."

"Then I presume if we simply spread the table and let you talk our guests will be satisfied?" said Mrs. Idiot, blandly.

"Precisely," the Idiot replied. "It will be delightful. Just think of the menu! Instead of oysters I will indulge in a few opinions as to the intellectual qualities of bivalves generally, finishing up with a glowing tribute to the man who is content to be a clam and not talk too much. In the place of purée we will tackle some such subject as the future of Spain. I think I could ladle out a few sound ideas on that subject that would be as clear as the purest consommé. Then for fish, that would be easy. A good trout story, with imagination sauce, would do very well. For the entrée I will give you one of my most recent poems, and the roast will be – "

"And the rest of us are to sit and twiddle our thumbs while you soliloquize?" demanded Mrs. Idiot. "I rather think not. I will provide the roast, my dear John, and it will consist largely of remarks upon the ways of cooks."

"A very proper subject for a roast," observed the Idiot, complacently, "and in your present frame of mind I think it will be not only well done, but rare as well, with plenty of crisp. And so we can simply talk this dinner through. It will be novel, certainly, and if you provide plenty of bread and butter no one need go away hungry."

"Very true," Mrs. Idiot answered. "And now that you have had your fun, suppose we put our minds on the serious aspect of the case. Two hours from now four people are coming here hungry – "

"I have it!" cried the Idiot, delightedly. "Let's borrow a cook! I don't believe it's ever been done before. It would be splendid, not only in getting us out of our troubles, but in establishing an entirely new principle in domestic science. What is the use of neighbors who will not be neighborly and lend you their most cherished possession?"

"None at all," sighed Mrs. Idiot, despairingly.

"Now, when we lived in our flat in New York the people up-stairs borrowed our ice," said the Idiot; "the people down-stairs borrowed our dining-room chairs; the people across the hall borrowed butter and milk and eggs, and I think we once borrowed a lemon from the people on the top floor."

"Never!" cried Mrs. Idiot.

"Yes, we did, my dear," insisted the Idiot. "At least I did. You and the children were off in the country, and one hot summer's night, two years ago, I was consumed with a desire for a glass of lemonade, and as there were no lemons in the house, or the flat, I sent out to borrow. I began at the basement and worked up towards the roof, and ultimately got what I wanted, although, as I have said, it was the top-flat people I got it from."

"And did you ever return it?" demanded Mrs. Idiot.

"I regret to say that I didn't," said the Idiot. "But I will, and with interest. I wonder what two years' interest on a lemon is!" he added. "I suppose that a borrowed lemon compounded at the rate of six per cent. could be paid off by a lemon and one small Bermuda potato. I will send my check for both to those people to-morrow. What was their name?"

"I never knew," said Mrs. Idiot. "I never liked them, and I never called. I am sorry you are under obligations to them."

"Only for a lemon, though, dear," said the Idiot, "at six per cent."

"But what does all this prove?" demanded the poor little housekeeper.

"That the principle of lending is recognized among neighbors," the Idiot explained. "If a neighbor will lend a lemon, surely a neighbor will lend a cook. The principle involved is the same in both cases. Particularly so in this case, for my experience with cooks has been that they are, after all, for the most part nothing but human lemons. If the departed Bridget had been anything but full of sourness she would not have left us so unexpectedly."

"You don't really think for a moment, do you, that the Jimpsonberrys would lend us their cook, or that she would come, or that I would ask them?" said Mrs. Idiot.

"Well, I suppose not," said the Idiot. "I suppose not. But I don't see why! First, the Jimpsonberrys, as our neighbors, ought to be willing to get us out of our trouble. Second, we don't ask their cook to come for nothing. By coming she will receive an addition to her wages which will help her to endow a policeman with a moderate fortune some day when she marries him. As for your asking Mrs. Jimpsonberry to lend us her cook for a few hours, that is the main objection. When one borrows one must give collateral, and it may be that it would embarrass you to offer Mike as security for the safe return of the Jimpsonberrys' cook. Anyhow, I see weak points in my plan, and we'd better abandon it. If the Jimpsonberrys' cook is the only available incendiary in the neighborhood, we'd better stop where we are. When we dined at Jimpsonberrys' last week I went away feeling that Jimpsonberry ought to collect fire insurance on that dinner. It wasn't cooked; it was a plain case of arson."

It was at this precise moment, when poor Mrs. Idiot was beginning to despair of getting any advice of value from her husband, that the telephone-bell rang, and the Idiot rose up to answer the call.

"Hello!" he said.

"Oh! Hello, old man!" he added. "That you? Glad to see you."

"Yes," he continued, after a pause. "Of course we expect you."

"Seven o'clock sharp," he remarked, a moment later. "You'll surely be here?" Then after a second pause, he added:

"Good! You can stay all night if you wish; we've plenty of room. Good-bye."

"Who was it?" asked Mrs. Idiot, as the Idiot hung up the receiver of the telephone.