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                   _"If a wife is allowed to boil at
                   all she will always boil over."_


                            The Gentle Art
                                 _of_
                             Cooking Wives


                    By ELIZABETH STRONG WORTHINGTON

                          Author _of_ "How to
                         Cook Husbands," etc.


                Published at 150 Fifth Avenue, New York
                    by the Dodge Publishing Company


                   [The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives]

                         COPYRIGHT IN THE YEAR
                          NINETEEN HUNDRED BY
                          DODGE PUBLISHING CO.


                      [Illustration: "CONSTANCE"]




                                   I


"Girls, come to order!" shouted Hilda Bretherton in a somewhat
disorderly tone.

"How can we come to order without a president?" queried a
rosy-cheeked, roly-poly damsel answering to the name of Puddy Kennett.

"I elect Prue Shaftsbury!" screamed Hilda above the merry din of
voices.

"You can't elect--you simply nominate," said Prue.

"I second the motion," said Nannie Branscome, and her remark was
instantly followed by a storm of "ayes" before they were called for,
and the president was declared elected and proceeded to take her seat.

"Young ladies," said she, "we are met to consider a scandalous----"

"Scurrilous," suggested Hilda.

"----alarming article," continued the president, "entitled 'How to
Cook Wives.'"

"Here! here!" interrupted Hilda again, "we can't do anything until
we've elected officers and appointed committees."

"Out of a club of four members?" queried Prudence.

"Certainly. Mother said that yesterday at her club, out of eight women
they elected twelve officers and appointed seven committees of three
each. Why, you know two men can't meet on a street corner without
immediately forming a secret society, electing president,
vice-president, secretary, and treasurer, and appointing a committee
of five to get up a banquet."

"But to return to the subject," persisted the president--a long-faced
girl with a solemn countenance, but a suspicious gleam in her eye.
"'How to Cook Wives'--that is the question before the house."

"'How to Cook Wives!' Well, if that isn't rich! It makes me think of
the old English nursery song--'Come, ducky, come and be killed.' Now
it will be, 'Come, ducky, come and be cooked.' I move that Congress be
urged to enact a law adopting that phrase as the only legal form of
proposal. Then if any little goose accepts she knows what to expect,
and is not caught up and fried without foreknowledge."

"Young ladies," said the president.

"Don't mow me down in my prime," urged Hilda in an injured tone. "I'm
making my maiden speech in the house."

"Oh, girls, look, quick!" cried Puddy. "See Miss Leigh. Isn't that a
fetching gown she has on?"

The entire club rushed to the window.

"Who's she with?" asked Hilda. "He's rather fetching, too."

"I believe his name is Chance," said Puddy Kennett. "He's not a
society fellow."

"Oh, he's the chum of that lovely man," said Hilda.

"Which lovely man?" asked Prue. "There are so many of them."

"Why--oh, you know his name. I can't think of it--Loveland--Steve
Loveland. We met him at Constance Leigh's one evening."

Here Nannie Branscome, but no one noticed her.

"Young ladies, come to order," said the president.

"Or order will come to you," said Hilda. "Prue has raised her
parasol--gavel, I mean."

"There goes Amy Frisbe," remarked Puddy from her post by the window.
"Do you know her engagement's off?"

"Well, I'll be jig----" Hilda began.

"Sh-h!" said the president.

"The president objects to slang, but I'll still be jiggered, as Lord
Fauntleroy's friend remarked."

"Sh-h!" said the president.

"Girls, that reminds me," said Puddy. "I met a publisher from New York
at the opera last night who objected to the slightest slang."

"Oh, me!" exclaimed Hilda. "Why, where has Mother Nature been keeping
the dear man all these years?"

"On Mr. Sheldon's editorial staff," suggested Nannie Branscome.

"Oh, that's too bad, Nannie," exclaimed Prudence. "My father--and he's
not a religious man--said the Topeka _Capital_ was a wonderful paper
Sheldon's week."

"I'm not denying that,"