Miss Cicely Jones is just home from boarding-school and engaged to be married, and as she knows nothing about cooking or housework, she is going to take a few lessons in the culinary art to fit her for the new station in life which she is expected to adorn with housewifely grace.

She makes a charming picture as she stands in the kitchen door, draped in a chintz apron prettily trimmed with bows of ribbon, her bangs hidden under a Dolly Varden cap, while she gracefully swings to and fro on her French kid heels.^[1]

“Mamma,” she lisped, “pleathe introduce me to your assistant?”

Mamma said, “Bridget, this is your young lady, Miss Cicely, who wants to learn the name and use of everything in the kitchen and how to make cocoanut rusks and angel-food, before she goes to housekeeping for herself.”^[2]

Bridget is not very favorably impressed, but as she looks at the vision of youth and beauty before her, she relents a little and says:

“I’ll throy.”

“Now Bridget, dear,” said Miss Cicely when they were alone, “tell me everything, won’t you? You see I don’t know anything except what they did at school--and oh, isn’t this old kitchen lovely? What makes the ceiling such a beautiful bronze color, Bridget?”^[3]

“Shmoke,” answers Bridget shortly, “an’ me ould eyes are put out wid the same.”

“Shmoke, I must remember that. Bridget, what are those shiny things on the wall?”

“Kivvers--tin kivvers for the kittles.”

“Oh, yes--kivvers. I must look for the derivation of that word. Bridget, what are those round things in the basket?”

“Sure, thim’s praties. Fur the Lorrud’s sake where hev yez lived niver to hear tell o’ praties? Feth, thim’s the principal mate in the oul’ counthry!”

“Oh, but we have corrupted the name into potatoes. I see. It is such a shame not to retain the idioms of a language. Bridget, do you mind if I call you Biddie? it is more euphonious, and modernizes the old classic appellation. But what is this liquid in the pan here?”^[4]

“Howly Mither! Where wuz ye raised? Feth, that’s millick, fresh from the coo.”

“Millick! That is the vernacular I dare say, for milk; and this thick yellow coating?”

“It’s crame--Lord--sich ignurntz.”

“Crame! Well, well; now Biddie, dear, I must get to work. I’m going to make a cake--all out of my own head, for Henry--he’s my lover, Biddie--to eat when he comes to-night!”

(Aside) “It’s dead intirely he’ll be if he ates it.”

“Now Biddie, I’ve got everything down here on my tablet: A pound of butter, 20 eggs, 2 pounds of sugar, salt to your taste--flour, vanilla, baking powder in proportion as your judgment dictates. Now Biddie, let me have the eggs first. Why! it says, ‘beat them well,’ but won’t that break the shells?”^[5]

“Feth, I’d brek ’em this time anny how, lest they don’t set well on Mister Henry’s stummick,” said Bridget pleasantly.

“All right. I suppose I can use the shells separately. There they go! Biddie dear, I’ve broken all the eggs into the flour, and you may save the shells to give to some poor people. Now, what next? Oh, I’m so tired! Isn’t housework just awfully hard? But I’m so glad I’ve learned to make cake. Now what shall I do next, Biddie?”

“Axin yer pardon, yez might give it to the pigs, Miss Cicely,” said Bridget, “it’s mesilf can’t say no ither use for it.”

“Pigs! Oh, Biddie!!! You don’t mean to say that you have some dear cunning little white pigs! Oh, do bring the little darlings in and let me feed them! I’m just dying to have one for a pet. I think they are too awfully sweet for anything.”

Just then the bell rang and Mr. Henry was announced. Cicely told Bridget she would take another lesson the next day, and she went into the parlor with her chintz apron on, with a little dab of flour on her nose, and told Henry she was learning to cook^[6]--and he told her she must not get worried nor overheated, and that he didn’t care whether she could cook or not--he didn’t want to eat when he could have her to talk to----and poor Bridget was just slamming things in the kitchen and talking to herself (in that sweet idiom) about “idgits ternin things upsid down for her convanience.”