the steak."

"That is very true, my dear," said Brinley, "but you are responsible for
the cook who did. It would never do for me to interfere. I have troubles
enough with my office-boys. This is your bailiwick, not mine, and until
I ask you to scold my clerks you mustn't ask me to scold your servants."
With this sage remark the valiant Brinley at once took his departure.

Time passed, and it so happened one autumn that the once happy household
found itself in the throes of a particularly aggravated case of cook.
She was a sixteen-dollar cook, and had been recommended as being
"splendid." In just what respect she showed her splendor, save in her
regal lack of manners and the marvellous coloring of her costumes on her
Sundays out, was never perceptible, but one thing that was wholly clear
at the end of a three-weeks' service was her independence of manner.

Meals were never ready on time, and the dinner-hour, instead of being a
fixed time beneath her sway, seemed to become a variable point,
according to the lady's whim. In the observance of the breakfast-hour
she was equally erratic, and on several trying occasions Brinley was on
the verge of the dilemma of either failing to keep an appointment in
town or going without his morning meal. Sometimes the coffee would come
to the table a thin, amber fluid that tasted like particularly bad
consomme. Again it would be served with all the thickness of a _puree_.
Her bread was similarly variable in its undesirability. There were
biscuits that held all the flaky charm of a snowball. There were loaves
of bread that reminded one of the stories of hardtack in Cuba during the
late unpleasantness. There were English muffins that rested upon poor
Brinley's digestion as the world may fairly be presumed to rest upon the
shoulders of Atlas, and, indeed, it is a tradition in the Brinley family
that one of this cook's pie-crusts rivalled Harveyized steel in its
impenetrability.

Indeed, Brinley, usually a silent sufferer, commented upon this cohesive
quality of Ellen's pastry on two different occasions. On the first he
advised Mrs. Brinley to learn the secret of Ellen's manipulation of the
ingredients of a pie-crust, and have herself capitalized to rival the
corporations which provide the government with armor-plate. On the
second he made the sage though disagreeable remark that the "next
apple-pie we have should be served with individual steam-drills." And he
one day accompanied Mrs. Brin