In the hands of
such a person the old-fashioned "dinner-bell" was satisfying;
life could instantly be made intolerable for any one dawdling on
his way to a meal; the bell was capable of every desirable
profanity and left nothing bottled up in the breast of the
ringer. But the chamois-covered stick might whack upon Alice's
little Chinese bowls for a considerable length of time and
produce no great effect of urgency upon a hearer, nor any other
effect, except fury in the cook. The ironical impossibility of
expressing indignation otherwise than by sounds of gentle harmony
proved exasperating; the cook was apt to become surcharged, so
that explosive resignations, never rare, were somewhat more
frequent after the introduction of the gong.
Mrs. Adams took this increased frequency to be only another
manifestation of the inexplicable new difficulties that beset all
housekeeping. You paid a cook double what you had paid one a few
years before; and the cook knew half as much of cookery, and had
no gratitude. The more you gave these people, it seemed, the
worse they behaved--a condition not to be remedied by simply
giving them less, because you couldn't even get the worst unless
you paid her what she demanded. Nevertheless, Mrs. Adams
remained fitfully an optimist in the matter.
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