While a well-selected little restaurant dinner undoubtedly loosens the trammels of a too obdurate and persistent domesticity, the restaurant breakfast can scarcely be said to be conducive to an overweening amiability. Those who have tried it will not be inclined to dispute the matter. It is in the early morn that the term restaurant seems singularly inappropriate. The luminous, glittering, chattering resort where, at night, one may throw off one's care and temporarily forget one's home and mother, is, in the forenoon, but—an eating house. One is there, in vulgar materialism—to eat! The boiled-egg moment, that the mere ethics of good taste assign to privacy—with the morning ablutions and the care of the teeth—is a tragedy when translated into publicity. Conviviality, at the boiled-egg moment, is an impossibility. Ordinary courtesy is abstruse and difficult. Silence, the morning papers, the birth of one's daily attitude—the natural cravings of the hour—give way to the gloomy desolation of the public resort. Cheek-by-jowl with other unfortunates, in whom it is hope to discover an interest—for altruism is not born until noon, and mere selfishness monopolizes the morning hours—the meal is a detestable torture, worthy of a place in the catalogue of mediÆval horrors.

Yet Letitia and I came to it. We came to it next morning. There were no warm slippers for me; there was no loose dressing-gown for Letitia. We dressed; we put on our bonnets and shawls; we sallied forth to boiled egg. We were rather sullen about our sallying, and being devoid of a sense of humor, we saw nothing amusing in the empty glory of our prettily furnished apartment. I am told that the situation would have been saved, for the humorously born, by this mere idea. Yet I am still thankful for my mental inability to rout tragedy by comedy.

Letitia looked at me unaffectionately; I was able to regard Letitia without rapture. The maintenance of the honeymoon mood is generally strenuous—which is not meant for cynicism—but the honeymoon in its most effulgent radiance must pale, as Lubin and Dulcinea seek their boiled egg abroad. Alas!

"I dare not try it, Letitia," I said, shivering, as a morning waiter, in evening dress, set the terrible thing before me. "I have a horrible presentiment that it is bad. I don't know why, but I can't shake off the idea. Eggs are such a lottery."

"I wish you wouldn't set me against my food," she retorted peevishly, slicing the top from the offensive egg and peering timidly into it. Then with a smile: "Perhaps it's like the curate's egg."

"Don't, Letitia!" I cried indignantly, "I loathe that alleged joke. It is so silly and so played out. Besides, it was never meant for morning use. There are some things that it is criminal to jest about—eggs, and Parsifal, and cooks, and the Passion play," I added desperately.

I was determined that I would not taste my egg until I saw how Letitia took to hers. They were probably of the same brand. It was perhaps cowardly of me to let a frail little woman explore the mysteries of an unguessed egg, but I was in a thoroughly perverse mood. I watched her stolidly as she dipped in her spoon, stirred up the contents, and transferred a portion of them to her mouth. Nothing happened. She did not change color and I realized that all was well. For in the case of the restaurant egg: Ce n'est que le premier pas qui coÛte.

The tea tasted like boiled hay. It was called English breakfast tea, probably because the English would never think of drinking it, and if they did, they would never drink it at breakfast time. But it was hot and wet—two qualities that are sufficient for those who have not mastered the sublime art of tea-drinking. Letitia scarcely touched her breakfast. She immersed herself in the advertising columns of the morning newspaper, and was quite hidden behind the sheet. I was in that odious humor when, to be looked at as I ate, was unendurable—something simply not to be borne with equanimity. I was glad that Letitia couldn't see me, for while she wasn't looking I did very nicely, and ate my team of boiled eggs with relish! If Letitia had been looking at me, I should have left them both. One can not always account for the morning mood. And yet I have never been called a "crank."

"Archie," she said suddenly (and I quickly hid the egg-shells so that she should not remark upon my strangely-found appetite), "I think I've got it at last. It really looks as though there were a way out of our difficulties. But I do wish, dear boy, that you would try to eat."

She glanced at my plate. She saw the egg-shells. The rolls, butter, tea, had all disappeared. I felt a flush mount to my brow. Had I been detected in the commission of a crime, I could not have looked more uncomfortable.

"Oh, I see you have managed to do very well," she said in a pleased voice, without a vestige of sarcasm. "In fact"—with a smile—"if you do as well as that, without an appetite, I am quite unable to imagine what you would do with one. You are a healthy boy—healthy but silly."

"Well, Letitia," I murmured abjectly, "you were reading, and paying no attention to me—I might have been down at the Battery for all you cared—so I had to do something in self-defense."

"Don't apologize," said Letitia, and this time there was an intonation of ill-timed jocularity in her voice. "I am glad you were hungry, and I wish that I had been. I've eaten nothing, and you don't even notice it. You don't urge me to eat. It doesn't matter."

"Letitia!" I cried reproachfully. "Please—please—"

She laughed.

"I'm teasing you, Archie, and I didn't mean to do so. You are such a lovely subject for persecution that I can't resist the temptation. But—bother our appetites. I have forgotten the present and am looking into the future. Here is a little advertisement that will, I think, put an end to our anguish. Listen—"

She took a pencil and marked round the following, which she then proceeded to read aloud: "Irish widow lady, with one child, wants position as cook, in small refined family, of Christian principles. Good home preferred to big wages. Call 33 Sixth Avenue. Mrs. McCaffrey. Up one flight."

"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.

"For a couple who a few weeks ago knew nothing about the servant question, and indignantly scouted the idea that there was such a thing, we are getting on well," she said in a low voice. "You are growing awfully suspicious, Archie. The iron seems to have entered your soul. Because Anna Carter and Mrs. Potzenheimer were failures—quick failures I grant—you are now inclined to put every cook in the same boat. Oh, Archie, I'm ashamed of you. If you are always looking for evil motives you will find them, sure enough."

She paused, and the tears welled up again. The sight was so painful to me that—in sheer dread of its continuance—I succumbed. That is to say, I had no further adverse comments to make and the field was Letitia's! Undoubtedly, she knew it.

"You see, dear," she said in mollified tones, "you don't understand the probable position of poor Mrs. McCaffrey. Imagine her alone in the world with a child. She is poor. She must earn a living for the two of them. All she knows how to do is to cook. She places herself in the market as a cook. But there is the child! She can not smother it, and she must take it with her. She is therefore anxious that the place to which she takes it shall be respectable and—religious. I don't suppose that she is too fearfully particular. But naturally, she would not like to see the dear little thing in the house of a man who drank and swore, and of a woman who—well, of a woman who behaved in the femininely equivalent. So, just to protect herself, she says Christian principles. I admire her for it, Archie."

Silence on my part. Letitia's triumphant logic was of course unanswerable. I made no attempt to answer it, and Letitia was "riled."

"Do say something, dear," she urged.

"I don't want to vex you, Letitia," I said, "and that is why I am silent. But you surely must know that men with Christian principles do swear and do drink. Our old servant at Oxford had thoroughly Christian principles, but he used to beat his wife regularly every night. The Christian principles were there, but they were not sufficient."

Letitia knew that she had won the day and was instantly her own delightful, charming self. "You are splitting straws," she said, "you baby! I have a great mind to tell Mrs. McCaffrey exactly what you said—and don't believe! It would serve you right if I went to 33 Sixth Avenue and said, 'You'll like our home, Mrs. McCaffrey. My husband has Christian principles. He drinks like a fish, swears like a trooper, and beats his wife like a British workingman. But he is such a Christian!' Archie, I believe you're jealous, and that's the trouble with you. You think that if there is a child your nose will be out of joint. Such a foolish husband!"

And Letitia rose in her seat and kissed me over the table, although there were two waiters in dangerous proximity, and an enormous married couple, who seemed scandalized, at the very next table. It really did look most unseemly at such an ungodly hour of the morning!

"Now confess," she said tauntingly, "confess that you are pleased. Confess it at once, sir, or—or I shall kiss you again, and this time much louder."

I tried to be stern, and to recall the various grades of vexation that I had known since the boiled eggs were brought in. But my irritation had vanished. My wife, witch-like, had dissipated the mists that had obscured my good nature. After all, if she were pleased, why need I worry? The affairs of our household were assuredly hers—although, up to the present, I had suffered from their most uncomfortable reflection. I felt better. Perhaps the much-despised breakfast was, in spite of all, partly responsible for the mental metamorphosis.

"She certainly will have a good home," said Letitia, pursuing her thoughts aloud, "and it is really nice to meet a woman who wants one. It shows a refined mood. What did Anna Carter care for a good home, except to go away from it every night? And Mrs. Potzenheimer? You are very domesticated for a man, Archie—whatever you may be, you are that—and I feel sure that Mrs. McCaffrey will take to you at once. And, Archie—I shall teach the child to call you uncle, and me auntie. It will be so dear and sweet."

"What an absurd girl you are, Letitia," I exclaimed, amused in spite of myself at her ingenuous remarks. "You remind me of Dora, the child-wife, in David Copperfield."

"I call that most unkind," she declared indignantly. "I always hated that character. Dora was such a fool that I was glad when she died. Please don't compare me to her again, Archie. I don't think I am a fool. Of course, I select a rosy outlook. I hope for the best, and I believe that most things are meant to turn out well. But I think I am most practical, and sensible, and staid, and sophisticated, and—old before my years."

I settled my account with the persistently smiling waiter, who appeared to regard us as jokes, and we left the restaurant. Letitia determined to ride down town with me and to set out at once in quest of the Irish McCaffrey. I had some qualms about permitting her to meander around the lower extremities of Sixth Avenue in the seclusion of the one-flight-up resorts. But she overruled my objections in her usual vivid manner.

"When you come home this evening," she said gaily, as we sat in the elevated train, and were whizzed south, "you'll find a nice little wife, a nice little cook, and a nice little child."

"To say nothing of a nice little dinner," I added materially. "At any rate, Letitia, I do hope you'll insist that the Christian principles are not cooked with the dinner. If there is anything on earth that I detest, it is Christian food. Porridge and griddle cakes for breakfast, cold rubbish for luncheon, and overdone chops, followed by indigestible, chunky pie—that is my conception of Christian food. I can't help thinking that much of the immorality in the world is simply due to Christian food."

"Stop it!" cried Letitia, laying a gloved finger on my lips. "You think you are getting clever. You are trying to imitate Grundy, Pinero, and Barrie, and I assure you that it is all lost on me. I want a cook, and not an epigram."

"As I said," I continued forcefully and rather loudly, "much of the immorality of the world is simply due to Christian food. Christian food is easy and generally—boiled. The mistaken idea that sound morals are the result of bad digestion is responsible for the inartistic plight of England and America."

"Hush, Archie!" exclaimed Letitia, looking around her nervously. "You talk as though you were haranguing a mob. And just the sort of nonsense that a mob loves, too. As for the plight of England and America—you are forgetting France. And look where French gluttony has led the nation! As for lack of morality—"

"Bah!" I remarked perversely, "France's lack of morality is a phrase used for advertising purposes, my girl. There is a bigger lack of it in London and New York, but you don't hear so much about it, because it is ugly—like English plum pudding and American baked beans. No people can be really wicked who have invented the Duval restaurants. Compare the light-hearted, cheerful, exhilarating, comfortably-stomached Parisians, sitting outside their cafÉs and sipping their eaux sucrÉes, with the greedy English, absorbing stodgy buns and dingy lemonade, and with the criminal Americans, assimilating poisonous ice-creams, and destroying their mucous membranes with odious candies."

"At the next station I get out and walk," declared Letitia furiously. "I'll leave you, Archie. Your breakfast has gone to your head. What is the matter with you? Really, I begin to think that our domestic troubles have unseated your reason."

The train was stopping at the Fifty-third Street station and Letitia rose, prepared to get out. As a matter of fact, I had been enjoying myself immensely. My words had been addressed to Letitia, but they were selfishly designed for my own delectation. I liked to hear myself talk—in which respect, I resembled a good many other people I knew.

"Sit down, Letitia," I said, "I've finished. I just wanted to relieve myself of a few thoughts, which seemed relevant to the occasion."

"Everybody is looking at you," she asserted in vexation, "and—I'll get out, Archie, if you continue. What must these people think of a young man, excitedly discussing the ethics of food in the Sixth Avenue elevated railroad?"

"In a train positively littered with advertisements of food," I added savagely. "All around us are legends of pickles, and biscuits, and sauces, and catsup—and horrid things that are bought cooked, because we live in a country where the art is unknown, and where the cooks talk of Christian principles. You are not logical, Letitia. It seems to me that this is the very place where, if you don't think of food, advertisers lose their money."

"Well, think of it," muttered Letitia defiantly, "but don't talk about it."

"Following the example of English and Americans in the matter of immorality," I couldn't help saying. Then lightly: "Well, Letitia, you must admit that I am bright. You may not appreciate my clever remarks, but I'm sure they would make a hit in print."

"Not with me, dear," retorted my unappreciative wife. "I think they're silly, and old, and book-y, and I like you better in a home mood. I've never seen you as obstreperous as this before, and it has handicapped Mrs. McCaffrey for me, as she was the cause of it. And now, here I am at my station, and—you can ride back to yours. Don't work too hard to-day, Archie, and take a good luncheon—something warm and nourishing. I'm sure that you are not quite well, and I shall call in Dr. De Voursney if you have any more of these alarming symptoms to-night."

"One thing, Letitia," I said rather penitently, for it began to dawn upon me that I had made an ass of myself. "Mrs. McCaffrey advertises herself as a widow. Well, I want you to make sure that Mr. McCaffrey is good and dead, and that we don't get a cook-in-law as well as a child."

And this time Letitia laughed and dropped a curtsey, as I lifted my hat and left her.