wife."
Dinner was late that night. I spent a good half hour at the dressing table, first cursing the man for thinking that I was Bill's mother, when Bill has all of three years up on me; then cursing myself for falling into such disrepair as to make his faux pas completely justified (although, to do Bill's own mother justice, she'll look younger ten years from now, than I did that, evening); and finally doing a little conscientious homework with hairbrush, cold cream, powder, lipstick, and girdle. However, you can't correct two months of neglect in two minutes at the mirror. I looked like the Witch of Endor and, what's more, I felt like it.
Nobody has ever called me a raving beauty. Men have managed to see me pass by and still stay on their feet. Stop me if I'm wrong, but I don't think I've ever been any vainer than—or even as vain as—most other women. I've always been happy and satisfied to be clean, powdered, kempt, and to have my underwear nice—and invisible. Tears would have been in order, but I kept telling myself that red, swollen eyes would only heighten the character role I seemed to be playing. Anger came next, but when I looked at the bristling brows, the frown lines, the down- turned mouth, that mood was quickly abandoned in the interests of sex appeal. Then the whole thing struck me as so funny that I began to laugh and kept on laughing until I rolled off the boudoir stool. It was in that guise—the jolly, roly-poly, lovable old mom, chuckling at her cares— that I reappeared to a hideously embarrassed and much chastened guest.
Dinner went off smoothly and I managed to keep awake and vivacious, for one of my advanced years, through the evening. But I hadn't forgotten the mortal insult dealt to my twenty-seven years. When Bill came tromping out of the bathroom that night, yawning and groaning and look ing exactly twenty-one years old, I was giving my long, lank hair an added two hundred strokes, removing a month's accumulation of dust, burs, sand, cactus, and, of all things, a pearl earring.
I fixed him with a beady eye and, still brushing, I said, "Darling?" in that listen-and-listen-carefully tone.
"Yes, dear?" he yawned.
"We're going to have a new problem," I said.
"Oh; Lord!" Bill said. "What kind of a problem?"
"A most unusual and welcome kind of problem," I said. "A servant problem."
6. Too many cooks
It probably sounds awfully lofty to be moaning about the Servant Problem in a day and age when Annie and Bridget and Hilda—and not the poor redskins—are the true Van ishing Americans. But when you're in the business of feed ing people's faces three times a day, household help becomes not only a necessity, but a problem of such mag nitude as to put the Theory of Relativity in the shade.
For those of you who may occasionally have hankered for that neatly uniformed treasure who answers the tele phone and the door with flawless style, turns out feathery puff paste, and says "Dinner is served, Madam," with devastating chic, let me offer one word of advice: Don't.
Be happy in your self-contained, servantless houses— revel in them!
I can now give you a few simple ground rules for household help, and anybody who's ever been in the paying guest business will back me up.
1. Ninety-nine per cent of all professional cooks are crazy or alcoholic or mean, or all three.
2. No cook has ever heard of serving three meals on a Sunday.
3. No cook has ever seen a kitchen that was large enough, light enough, well enough equipped—except the kitchen at the last job.
4. No cook can ever understand why your guests don't like soggy popovers when Gertrude Lawrence, George V, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Elinor Glyn all adored them. (And there's no use in pointing out that all the foregoing celebrities are dead—and prob ably from soggy popovers.)
5. All cooks have spent their time exclusively in the service of the exalted and it's quite a step down for them to be in your tacky little
Dinner was late that night. I spent a good half hour at the dressing table, first cursing the man for thinking that I was Bill's mother, when Bill has all of three years up on me; then cursing myself for falling into such disrepair as to make his faux pas completely justified (although, to do Bill's own mother justice, she'll look younger ten years from now, than I did that, evening); and finally doing a little conscientious homework with hairbrush, cold cream, powder, lipstick, and girdle. However, you can't correct two months of neglect in two minutes at the mirror. I looked like the Witch of Endor and, what's more, I felt like it.
Nobody has ever called me a raving beauty. Men have managed to see me pass by and still stay on their feet. Stop me if I'm wrong, but I don't think I've ever been any vainer than—or even as vain as—most other women. I've always been happy and satisfied to be clean, powdered, kempt, and to have my underwear nice—and invisible. Tears would have been in order, but I kept telling myself that red, swollen eyes would only heighten the character role I seemed to be playing. Anger came next, but when I looked at the bristling brows, the frown lines, the down- turned mouth, that mood was quickly abandoned in the interests of sex appeal. Then the whole thing struck me as so funny that I began to laugh and kept on laughing until I rolled off the boudoir stool. It was in that guise—the jolly, roly-poly, lovable old mom, chuckling at her cares— that I reappeared to a hideously embarrassed and much chastened guest.
Dinner went off smoothly and I managed to keep awake and vivacious, for one of my advanced years, through the evening. But I hadn't forgotten the mortal insult dealt to my twenty-seven years. When Bill came tromping out of the bathroom that night, yawning and groaning and look ing exactly twenty-one years old, I was giving my long, lank hair an added two hundred strokes, removing a month's accumulation of dust, burs, sand, cactus, and, of all things, a pearl earring.
I fixed him with a beady eye and, still brushing, I said, "Darling?" in that listen-and-listen-carefully tone.
"Yes, dear?" he yawned.
"We're going to have a new problem," I said.
"Oh; Lord!" Bill said. "What kind of a problem?"
"A most unusual and welcome kind of problem," I said. "A servant problem."
6. Too many cooks
It probably sounds awfully lofty to be moaning about the Servant Problem in a day and age when Annie and Bridget and Hilda—and not the poor redskins—are the true Van ishing Americans. But when you're in the business of feed ing people's faces three times a day, household help becomes not only a necessity, but a problem of such mag nitude as to put the Theory of Relativity in the shade.
For those of you who may occasionally have hankered for that neatly uniformed treasure who answers the tele phone and the door with flawless style, turns out feathery puff paste, and says "Dinner is served, Madam," with devastating chic, let me offer one word of advice: Don't.
Be happy in your self-contained, servantless houses— revel in them!
I can now give you a few simple ground rules for household help, and anybody who's ever been in the paying guest business will back me up.
1. Ninety-nine per cent of all professional cooks are crazy or alcoholic or mean, or all three.
2. No cook has ever heard of serving three meals on a Sunday.
3. No cook has ever seen a kitchen that was large enough, light enough, well enough equipped—except the kitchen at the last job.
4. No cook can ever understand why your guests don't like soggy popovers when Gertrude Lawrence, George V, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Elinor Glyn all adored them. (And there's no use in pointing out that all the foregoing celebrities are dead—and prob ably from soggy popovers.)
5. All cooks have spent their time exclusively in the service of the exalted and it's quite a step down for them to be in your tacky little
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