At Home with the Jardines Part 32

"What's this?" said Jimmie. "I ordered chicken."

"Yes, sir!" said the waiter, mopping his brow, "What part would you like, sir?"

"The second joint," said Jimmie, with ominous distinctness. "That is if English chickens _grow_ any."

"Yes, sir, yes, sir," said the poor waiter.

He hurried away, and finally brought up the head waiter.

"What part of the fowl would you like, sir? This man did not understand your order."

Jimmie leaned back in his chair, and looked up at the waiters without speaking.

"How many parts are there to a chicken?" said Jimmie. "As your man does not seem to speak English, you name them over, and when you come to the one I want, I'll scream."

Both waiters shifted their weight to the other foot and looked embarra.s.sed.

"I want the knee of the chicken," said Jimmie. "From the knee-cap to the thigh. That part which supports the fowl when it walks. Not the breast nor the neck nor the back nor yet the ankle, but the upper, the superior part of the leg. Do you understand?"

"The upper part of the leg? I beg pardon, sir, but the waiter understood that you wanted a cut from the second joint on that table, sir."

Jimmie simply looked at him.

"The English speak a dialect somewhat resembling the American language, Jimmie," I said, soothingly.

A knock at the door, and Bee appeared.

"Should Wives Work?" she said. "Answer that offhand! There is a reporter down-stairs for the _Sunday Gorgon_, who wants five hundred words from you which he is prepared to take down in shorthand. Should Wives Work?"

"Should wives work?" I cried, ferociously. "Would they if they got a chance? Oh, Bee, for heaven's sake, go down and tell him I'm out.

Please, Bee."

"No, just give me a few ideas, and I'll go down and enlarge on them, and make up your five hundred words. Your opinion is so valuable. You don't know a single thing about it!"

I got rid of her by some diplomacy, and returned to the Jimmies.

_Mr. and Mrs. Jimmie at Canterbury_.

"Never mind her, dear," said Mrs. Jimmie. "Think what a beautiful, restful day we shall have to-morrow, wandering about Canterbury cathedral. I can't think of a more beautiful way to spend Sunday.

London is simply dreadful on Sunday."

"London is simply dreadful at any time," said Jimmie. "Every restaurant, even the Savoy, closes at midnight. I got shut into the Criterion the other evening in the grill, and had to come out through the hotel, and they unlocked more doors and unclanked more chains than I've heard since I was the prisoner of Chillon. Talk about going wrong in London. You simply couldn't. Goodness is thrust upon you, if you are travelling. If you are a native and belong to the clubs--that's different. But the way they close things in England at the very time of all others that you want them to be open--"

Bee entered.

"Excuse me," she said, in a whisper. Bee thinks if she whispers it is not an interruption. "A committee from the Jewish Hospital would like to know if Aubrey will present a set of his books to the Hospital Library."

"If he does, that will be sixty dollars that he will have paid out this week, for his own books, for the privilege of giving them away. But as this is the last hospital in town that he has _not_ contributed to, tell them yes, and then set the dog on them!" I said, savagely.

"You poor thing!" said Bee. "It's a shame the way people torment you."

Billy crowded past his mother, and climbed into my lap.

"Tell me a story, dear Tattah," said this born wheedler, patting my face with his little black paw.

"No, now Billy--" began Bee.

"Let him stay," I cried, casting down my pen. "It is so seldom that he cuddles that I'll sacrifice myself upon the altar of aunthood. Well, once upon a time, Billy, there was a dear little blue hen who stole away--sit still now! You've more legs than a centipede!--who stole away every day and went under the barn where it was so cool and shady, and laid a lovely little smooth, cream-coloured egg. Then when she had laid it, she was so proud that she could never help coming out and cackling at the top of her voice, 'Cut-cut-cut-ka-dah-cut!' And then the lady of the house would run out and say, 'Oh, there's that naughty little blue hen cackling over a new-laid egg which I did want so much to make an omelette, but I don't know where she has laid it. The naughty little blue hen!' So the poor lady would be obliged to use the red hen's eggs for the omelette, because the little blue hen laid _hers_ under the barn.

"Well, after the little blue hen had laid six beautiful cream-coloured eggs, she began to sit on them day after day, covering them with her feathers, and tucking her lovely little blue wings down around the edges of her nest to keep the eggs warm, and day after day she sat and dreamed of six darling little yellow, fluffy chickens with brown wings and sparkling black eyes and dear little peepy voices, and she was so happy in thinking of her little children that she was as patient as possible, and never seemed to care that all the other hens and chickens were running about in the warm yellow sunshine and snapping up lively little shiny bugs with their yellow beaks.

"Well, after awhile, this dear little patient blue hen heard the funniest little tapping, tapping, tapping under her wings." Billy's eyes nearly bulged out of his head as he tapped the arm of the chair as I did. "And then she felt the most curious little fluttering under her wings--oh, Billy, _what_ do you think this little blue hen felt fluttering under her wings?"

"A _omelette_!" said Billy, excitedly.

I finished the Jimmies as an anticlimax.

_Mr. and Mrs. Jimmie at Canterbury_.

It did not disturb Jimmie the next day to discover that Canterbury Cathedral is _closed to visitors on Sunday_.

_We_ saw it on Monday.

After such a day it was no surprise to me to have Aubrey come home so dead tired that our strenuous evening was given up, and we all went out in Cary's new motor-car instead.

CHAPTER XII

A LETTER FROM JIMMIE

Jimmie's "bread-and-b.u.t.ter" letter gave me such joy that I copy it here, which shows how little I care for the conventions of life, inasmuch as I reproduce none of the others. Lady Mary's, Mrs.

Jimmie's, Artie Beg's, Cary's, Sir Wemyss's, Captain Featherstone's, were all models of propriety, and, except that they are friends of mine, I would add, of stupidity. Bee's--Bee's showed me a dozen ways in which I might have improved my hospitality, and hers, at least, does not come under the head of the name. But Jimmie's! Here it is:

"Wretched creature and your wholly irreproachable husband:

"Ordinarily I would simply write to say that I had had a bully good time at the iniquitous place where you hang out, and by so doing--were I an ordinary man--would consider that I had paid my just debts and was quits with the world--and with you. But not being ordinary--on the contrary, and without undue pride, denominating myself as a most extraordinary, rare, and orchid-like male creature, I feel that the appended narrative, albeit I do not figure therein as Sir Galahad or King Arthur, is no more than your just due. I relinquish the steel helmet and holy grail adjuncts, and exploit myself to your ribald gaze and half-witted laughter just as I is.

"But first, let me rid myself of my obligations. I did enjoy every moment of my stay, and I recall, with a particular and somewhat pardonable pride, that you, Faith, on one occasion, took off my shoes,--a menial duty which I shall hereafter exact of you wherever we may be. Don't complain. It was yourself established the precedent, somewhat, if you will remember, against my will.

"Aubrey, as usual, was all that was kind.