The bachelor and the chafing dish

This was too much. My friend snapped off his churchwarden, and, as he lit up another, said : “Well, I’ll be damned! Can’t you do something? If I provide the haggis, it seems to me you might at least wait until it cooks ! ” Then he became so earnest that he went off into the most unintelligible Scotch dialect. Henderson always talked in another language when he got mad. Finally, he ended up understandingly : “ When you’ve been aboard my yacht, haven’t I waited around an old iron anchor hours just for a breeze that you might enjoy yourself ? How was it that day off Noshone Island ? ” “ Yes, how was it that day when I got up a surprise dinner for your birthday, and you went off in some other fellow’s yacht — and didn’t turn up ? Didn’t I do the waiting ? ” “Well, I’ll admit that was a surprise,” said Henderson with a make-believe humbleness. Then, suddenly, with a merry twinkle, “ Come, old chap, you never would take a chaffing. Why, that haggis has been cooked ! It only needs steaming up ! ” “ It isn’t everybody who can appreciate a haggis,” said my Scotch friend half an hour afterward. “ You do. I can see that.” The Bachelor and the Chafing-dish . “It depends greatly on the condition of one’s stomach, I should say,” I said timidly. I always tried to enjoy everything the way he did. “ Yes ; it does depend on the stomach. I can see that. This one which you have just eaten is capital.” We puffed our pipes in silence for a few moments. Then, after a new brew of hot Scotch, Henderson said: “Now let me fix you up something— just to top off with. We will have a Scotch woodcock ! ” “ Let’s talk about it instead. Really, I haven’t an appetite. What is it ? ” He gave me a look of despair, and then resignedly said, between puffs : “ If you want something appetizing, you couldn’t think of anything better.” As for me, I never could get up much interest eating anything when once I had dined. But I’ll challenge any one to withstand Henderson’s seductive ways. I have always thought that if I were a housekeeper I would do all my marketing just before the meal hour. Even a raw carrot or a turnip had charms for me then. Many a time, on such occasions, have I wondered why it was difficult for even the most blase housekeeper to resist the temptation of a fine-looking head of cabbage. My Scotch Friend. My friend was certainly a gourmand. He never seemed to suffer the pangs of indigestion. No matter how sumptuously he had eaten he would enter into the most happy kind of a discussion concerning why a well-regulated larder ought to be a housewife’s throne. “ And yet,” he would say, “ I never saw a woman take a real heart interest in her kitchen, as I would in my ship’s galley. The average cook in a private house wouldn’t be tolerated in a man’s systematic domain. Now, look at Richard, my steward ! Why, he has a little box of a place — you could hardly turn around in it! Yet what of that dinner I gave aboard the other night to two and twelve club fellows ? Didn’t we have a dozen courses ? If you’d looked into that galley an hour after, there wouldn’t have been a sign of it ! Ten to one Richard would have been found reading ‘ The Wreck of the Grosvenor ! ’ ”