: "No, no, my dear! I couldn't invent anything equal to _this_.
Oh my! oh my!"

Mrs. Campbell, seizing him by the arm: "Well, if you don't tell,
instantly, what it is--"

Campbell: "But I _can't_ tell. I promised Roberts I wouldn't."

Roberts, wildly: "Oh, tell, tell!"

Campbell: "About the cook, too, Agnes?"

Mrs. Roberts: "Yes, yes; everything! Only tell!"

Campbell, struggling to recover himself: "Why, you see, Agnes engaged
a cook, up-town--"

Mrs. Roberts: "I didn't want you to know it, Amy. I thought you would
be troubled if you knew you were coming to visit me just when I was
trying to break in a new cook, and so I told Edward not to let Willis
know. Go on, Willis."

Mrs. Campbell: "And I understand just how you felt about it, Agnes;
you knew he'd laugh. Go on, Willis."

Campbell: "And she sent her down here, and told Roberts to keep her
till she came herself."

Both Ladies: "Well?"

Campbell: "And I found poor old Roberts here, looking out for a cook
that he'd never seen before, and expecting to recognize a woman that
he'd never met in his life." He explodes in another fit of laughter.
The ladies stare at him in mystification.

Mrs. Roberts: "I would have stayed myself to meet her, but I'd left my
plush bag with my purse in it at Stearns's, and I had to go back after
it."

Mrs. Campbell: "She _had_ to leave him. What is there to laugh at?"

Mrs. Roberts: "I see nothing to laugh at, Willis."

Campbell, sobered: "You _don't_?"

Both Ladies: "No."

Campbell: "Well, by Jove! Then perhaps you don't see anything to laugh
at in Roberts's having to guess who the cook was; and going up to the
wrong woman, and her getting mad, and going out and bringing back her
little fiery-red tipsy Irishman of a husband, that wanted to fight
Roberts; and my having to lie out of it for him; and their going off
again, and the husband coming back four or five times between drinks,
and having to be smoothed up each time--"

Both Ladies: "No!"

Mrs. Roberts: "It was simply horrid."

Mrs. Campbell: "It wasn't funny at all; it was simply disgusting. Poor
Mr. Roberts!"

Campbell: "Well, by the holy poker! This knocks me out! The next time
I'll marry a man, and have somebody around that can appreciate a joke.
The Irishman said himself it would make a cow laugh."

Mrs. Campbell: "I congratulate you on being of the same taste, Willis.
And I dare say you tried to heighten the absurdity, and add to poor
Mr. Roberts's