"And an attendant who fell by mistake into the sausage machine," added Miss Lowe, laughing. "I suppose one ought to be judiciously blind if one is to preserve one's peace of mind."
"One may shut one's eyes, but one can't do away with one's nose!" persisted Miss Barton. "There was the most horrible and peculiar and objectionable odour in the hall yesterday morning, all the time I was painting. I came to the conclusion that a rat must have died recently behind the panelling. Then Mrs. Marsden came in with some milk-cans, and she raised a lid from a big pot close to where I was sitting. What do you think was inside? Twelve pounds of beef that she had put down to pickle! I hinted that it was rather high, but she didn't seem to perceive it in the least. She can't have the slightest vestige of a nose!"
"Perhaps, like some tribes of Africans, she prefers her meat gamey. Don't look so alarmed, you poor girls, it's not going to appear on our table for dinner! I ordered a fowl."
"Which was alive only a couple of hours ago, for I saw the children assisting to chase it wildly round the yard and catch it!" put in Miss Barton. "We warned you, when we invited you, not to expect too much!"
Mrs. Marsden's training in the domestic arts had evidently been defective, and her cooking was decidedly eccentric. The fowl turned up at table plucked, certainly, but looking very pale and anæmic with its long untrussed legs sticking helplessly out before it. It was such an absurd object that as soon as the landlady had departed from the room the company exploded.
"How am I to carve the wretched thing?" shrieked Miss Lowe. "I hardly know where its wings are! I've never before seen a chicken served absolutely _au naturel_!"
"I expect it to rise up and walk!" hinnied Miss Barton. "It seems hardly decent to have left its claws on! Look at the sauce! It's simply bread and milk! Oh, for the fleshpots of Egypt!"
A ground-rice pudding which followed proved equally astonishing. Miss Lowe had suggested that an egg would be an improvement in its composition, and behold! when it made its appearance there was an egg neatly poached in the middle. The giggling guests rather enjoyed the episode than otherwise. They had come to be entertained, and they certainly found plenty to amuse them, especially in the humorous attitude with which their hostesses viewed all the little inconveniences.