THE FOOD PROBLEM.
Greenwood is one of those intolerable men who always rise to an occasion. He is the kind of man who rushes to sit on the head of a horse when it is down. I can even picture him sitting on the bonnet of an overturned motor-'bus and shouting, "Now all together!" to the men who are readjusting it.
We were going down to business whon Perkins introduced a new grievance against the Censor.
"Whatever do they allow this rot about food prices in the paper for?" he began. "It unsettles women awfully. Now my wife is insisting on having her housekeeping allowance advanced twenty-five per cent. I tell you she'd never have known anything about the advances if they hadn't been put before her in flaring type."
The general opinion of the compartment seemed to be that the Censor had gravely neglected his duty.
"I agreed with my wife," said Blair, who is a shrewd Scotchman, "and told her that she must have an extra two pounds a month. Now a twenty-five per cent. advance would have meant five pounds a month. Luckily Providence fashioned women without an idea of arithmetic."
Most of us looked as if we wished we had thought of this admirable idea.
"My wife drew my attention to the paper," said Greenwood loftily. "I did not argue the point with her. Finance is not woman's strong point. I rang for the cook at once."
66 4 Everyone looked admiringly at the hero who had dared to face his cook.
"I said to her," continued Greenwood, "'Cook, get the Stores price-list for to-day and serve for dinner precisely the things that have not advanced. You understand? That will do.' So you see the matter was settled."
"Er, what did your wife say?" asked Perkins.
"Say! What could she say? Here was the obvious solution. And I have noticed that women always lose their heads in an emergency. They never rise to the occasion."
The next morning I met Greenwood again.
"By the way," I asked, did have a good dinner yesterday?"
Greenwood looked me straight in the eyes. There is a saying that a liar cannot look you straight in the eyes. Discredit it. "The dinner was excellent," he replied. "I wish you had been there to try it. And every single thing at pre-war prices."
But that night I came across Mrs. Greenwood as she emerged from a Red Cross working party loaded with mufflers and mittens.
"Glad to hear these hard times don't affect your household," I began diplomatically.
Mrs. Greenwood smiled. "What has Oswald been telling you?"
"Nothing, except that he had an excellent dinner yesterday."
"I wasn't there," said Mrs. Greenwood; "I went to my mother's. You see, Cook conscientiously followed Oswald's instructions. He had sardines, Worcester sauce, macaroni, and tinned pork and beans. I can't make out quite which of teh two was the first to give notice afterwards. Perhaps it was what you call a dead heat. Only, unless Oswald shouted, 'Take a month's notice,' when he heard the cook's step in the hall, I am inclined to think that Cook got there first."
Now in the train I recommend tinned pork and beans with Worcester sauce as a cheap and nourishing food in war-time.
Greenwood says nothing but glares at me. For once in his life he cannot rise to the occasion.
"I pity the pore chaps that 'aven't got out 'ere. London streets, this time o' year, with the drizzle and slush must be awful."
Rural Intelligence.
"Wanted, an all-round Man for sheep and cows who can build and thatch."
The Rugby Advertiser.
Men we do not play billiards with.—I.
M. Take Jonescu.
