The Cook After j.M. Ward

Susan and Peter got married in Rome where Peter was working as a teacher at the Parker Institute. They lived in a nice room at the Anconi Hotel and had their meals at the restaurant of the hotel.

Some time later Susan got an urgent telegram from her home in England which said that her mother felt bad. So she had to fly to London.

Today she was to come back and Peter was waiting for her at Rome Aiurport. The plane landed with a short delay, Susan got off, went through the Customs and Passport Control and came up to Peter.

“Hello,” she said. “How are you?”

“Fine. And you?”

“Oh, I am tired, but happy to be back. Any news?”

“Yes, I’ve rented a comfortable flat for us. I’ve been living there for a week already. It is very close to the Anconi Hotel. Are you glad, Susan?”

“Of course I am, but I’m also afraid. You know, I can’t cook.”

“It’s all right. I’ll cook our meals. And we won’t have to eat home all the time. We can sometimes go to the Anconi restaurant and eat our favourite dishes there.”

It took them about an hour to get from the airport to their new home.

“Well, you have a look at the flat,” Peter said, “and I’ll cook our lunch. We are going to have fried meat, if you don’t mind. It will be ready very quickly.” And he went to the kitchen. Soon Susan came and looked at the meat.

“It looks very nice, but why are you cooking it without butter?”

“Never mind,” Peter said, “It’ll cook itself. We can go and have some beer.”

In the room they sat down on the sofa and began to drink beer and exchange news. Some minutes later Susan asked: “Don’t you think the meat can burn?”

They came into the kitchen.

“It has burnt after all,” Peter said.

“Have you ever cooked meat before?” Susan asked.

“As a matter of fact, I haven’t.”

“Neither have I”, said Susan. “You know what, let’s go to the Anconi restaurant. They serve delicious fried meat there.”

Letters in the Mail After e. Caldwell

In general, everybody likes to receive mail and probably nobody in the whole town of Stillwater liked to get letters more than Ray Buffin. However the fact was that Ray received fewer letters in his box at the post office than anybody else.

It had been like that almost all his life. Nobody wrote letters to him except that once a month he did get a bill from the gas and electric company and occasionally he found advertising matter in his box like everybody else in the town.

Of course, since he did not correspond with anybody, he never wrote a letter himself. But once, many years before, he had written a letter to a young girl in town. He had written her to tell how beautiful and lovely he thought she was and how much he loved her. He ended the letter by asking her to marry him, but he had received no answer.

In Stillwater, mail was delivered once a day. Every afternoon, except Sundays, the bus from New Orleans stopped in the town before the post-office and delivered two or three mail bags full of letters, magazines and newspapers. Soon after they were put into the letter boxes, Ray always closed his shop, where he made a living repairing radios, and hurried to the post-office. He was very disappointed if there was no mail for him, but he always had a feeling that one of these days he would get some.

Two of the younger men in town, Guy Hodge and Ralph Barnhill, decided to play a joke on Ray. They would send him a letter signed by a girl. When he received it, someone would ask him if it was a love letter, and someone else would take it from him and read it to everyone who wanted to listen. They asked Grace Brooks, the switch operator at the telephone company to write the letter. Grace was a pretty girl although not very young any more.

At first Grace said she would have nothing to do with their plan.

“I would never do such a thing,” she said.

The men did not know that it was Grace who had received the love letter from Ray a long time ago. At that time she was very young and had no thoughts about marrying any man. That was why she had not answered the letter. In recent years there were times when she was very sorry she hadn’t. She thought it was because of her that they were both lonely all these years.

“Please, Gracie,” said Ralph. “Be a good girl and write the letter for us or we will ask someone else to do it.”

“No, do not do that. I don’t want anybody else to do it. I’ll write a letter tonight. I think I know what to say.”

After the men left, Grace cried for a long time. Then she wrote a letter and in the morning mailed it in the letter-box at the post-office.

What was the surprise of Ralph, Guy and the other people who came to see Ray get the letter, when they saw that in the after reading it he ran straight to the telephone exchange. When Ralph and Guy followed him they found Ray and Guy together.

“Why did the joke work out like that? Do you suppose Grace signed her name by mistake?” asked Ralph.

“I think it was not a mistake,” said Guy. “Just think of it. He had been waiting for this letter most of his life and got it only because of us!”

“A joke can go wrong sometimes; that’s all right,” said Ralph. “But the next time we play a joke, let us be sure it is going to work”.