Finally my half-blinded eyes found out Ovide, who looked truly like an emissary of the evil one among it all, as he stood with his wet scarlet face, his feet buried in turkey feathers, and his arms up to the elbows in a bowl of flour.

"Ovide!" I called, faintly.

When he saw me, a pleased, triumphant look lit up his face.

"Do you want to burn down the car?" I asked, shortly, when I got him into the passage.

"Oh, no fear for dat," he answered in a somewhat patronizing tone. "You know," he went on, good-naturedly, "big turkey can't be cook if not have pretty good fire. But I'll open de window and den de fire she'll all go out. For me, you know I'm not mind de heat, for I'm used to dat when I fire de engine."

"But surely, Ovide, you will burn the turkey all up," I insisted, in a milder tone—for, as I have already stated, I was in no wise an authority on cooking, and from the patronizing way in which he spoke, I began to feel that I had been interfering unnecessarily.

"Well," he replied ponderingly, "p'rhaps she do a little too quick, and I'll tak her out; aldo she's only be in a few minute."

As I glanced at his flour-bedecked arms, he said, "Oh, yes, I'm find de raisin, and de curran, and de peel, and lots powder, dat makes de flour come big, and I'm mix dem all together when you come in, and we going to have fine Creesmis puddin' sure. It's too bad, do, dat I find a hole she's born in de bottom of de sospan, so dat I must put de puddin' in de kettle, which has not got big mouth; but she's pretty big around de middle, so I suppose de puddin' she's cook just as well dare."

I was too bewildered by all this detail to pay much attention to what he was saying about the smallness of the kettle's mouth; but I remembered it vividly afterwards.

Nodding gaily to me, he hurried back to the oven, from which the blue odorous smoke was still pouring. I lingered long enough to see him take the turkey out of it, stand it on the shelf in the corner, and then open the window.

As I passed Robbins, he let his paper flutter to his knee, and said, meaningly: "I hope yon chap, sir, don't think he's still firing on the engine."

As I smilingly shook my head and passed on, a presentiment of approaching disaster took possession of me—so that the recollection of the speaker's prophecies of evil regarding our cook did not come back with that keen sense of humor one would have expected.

When I reached Fielding's side, he said anxiously, "I hope he is getting along all right, William." As I noted his anxiety, and the hungry expression of his face, I answered with a glibness which I was far from feeling, that things were getting along swimmingly. I was now beginning to feel such a weight of responsibility in the success of the dinner that I sincerely wished I had not taken such an active interest in the appointment of the cook.

About an hour later, when we ceased our game, I noticed the odor of roast turkey was no longer prevalent; so with apprehensive heart, though nonchalant air, I made my way over to the kitchen again, and was just in time to see Ovide snatch the turkey—which now looked cold and forlorn enough—from the shelf and shove it into the still fervent oven, and to hear him mutter, "Dat's too bad I'm forgot to put you back for so long."

He did not see me until he had closed the oven door, and then he said, joyously, pointing to the kettle: "De puddin' she's in dare, and she's nearly all done now, and in fifteen or twenty minute more de dinner she's all be ready."

I suppose if I had not seen the bird's entrance into the oven for the second time, the announcement of the early approach of the festivities would have allayed some of my apprehensions, and perhaps have afforded me a little of the satisfaction Fielding and the conductor experienced when they heard the news. The effect of the tidings upon old Robbins, however, was tantalizing in the extreme. He threw his paper to one side, rested his elbows on his knees, and holding up his grizzly chin with his hands, began softly to whistle a monotonous, soul-disturbing air.

Ovide was true to his word, for scarcely had the twenty minutes elapsed, when in he bustled, pulled the table into the centre of the car, set it fairly well, after a number of amusing blunders, and then drawing up the chairs, said, with great gusto: "Now, Messieurs, I'm go and get de dinner."

As we seated ourselves, Fielding said, with a satisfaction that comes back to me vividly as I pen these words: "Well, William, I am glad it is ready; I never remember being so hungry." The kindly look which he bestowed on Ovide as he came in with the smoking turkey will also never be difficult to conjure up. But the moment my eyes fell upon that unfortunate bird, my heart began to beat with renewed apprehensions. Never before had I seen such an ill-favored, uninviting-looking fowl placed upon a table; its naturally white, smooth skin was now as seamy, black and arid-looking as the mouth of an ancient crater.

Covertly I glanced at Fielding to see what effect this steaming, yet mummified-looking object had upon him. My worst fears were verified: the complacent expression had fled, and was succeeded by a look in which consternation, anger and amazement were all blended.

The short, trying silence was broken by a rasping cough from Robbins, and then Fielding said, in a constrained tone, as he whetted his knife: "Well, this animal looks as though it had been through the fiery furnace created by Nebuchadnezzar for the undoing of the three Israelites."

Ovide, who was standing complacently behind Fielding's chair, not understanding the allusion, and thinking that he was called upon to say something, said brightly, "Oh, yes, sir, dat turkey is de finest turkey I never see."

Now, I had known Fielding, on numerous occasions, to laugh heartily at a much less amusing blunder, but on this occasion I sought his usually expressive face in vain for even the ghost of a smile. To add to my annoyance and the constraint of the situation, old Robbins found it necessary to again loudly clear his troublesome throat.

To save himself from making an angry reply, Fielding somewhat viciously commenced operations on the turkey, and attempted to carve off a leg; but in some unaccountable manner the knife came to a sudden halt as soon as it had pierced the dark skin. This unlooked-for interruption brought a puzzled look into Fielding's face; but he was a man not easily daunted by anything, and thinking that he had somehow come across a bone hitherto unknown to him in a turkey's anatomy, he twisted the bird round and confidently began the dissection of the other leg. The result was equally disheartening; the blade went a little below the skin, and then refused to budge.

Poor Fielding! His patience was by this time pretty well exhausted, and turning to the now anything but jubilant Ovide, said grimly: "In the name of all that is good, man, what is the matter with this turkey?"

He had gone however, to the wrong fount, for information this time, as Ovide wonderingly shook his head, and said, "Dat is de queerest ting I'm never see, sir."

The angry words on Fielding's lips were prevented by a low comprehensive laugh from old Robbins, who said, as he pointed satirically at his fireman, "Oh, aye; oh, aye; thou knows how to cook; thou does, of course thou does." Then turning to Fielding he said, with a side glance at me: "That bird, sir, has nobbut had its hide cooked, and all beneath it is frozen."

Even before Fielding, to verify this startling statement, had seized the knife, and, laying open the skin, exposed to view the partly frozen flesh, the whole miserable catastrophe was clear to my mind. I recalled how I had borne down on Ovide soon after he had put the bird for the first time into the blazing oven; how, in deference to my fears, he had taken it out and stood it on the shelf—when its skin, of course, could only have been scorched—where it had remained over an hour while he was superintending the construction and cooking of the pudding; and, finally, how the prevaricating fellow—whom I knew understood little more about cooking than I did—must have concluded, from the cinder-like appearance of the skin when he took it out of the oven the second time, after another twenty minutes' scorching, that it was cooked to the very marrow.

"Well!" ejaculated Fielding, letting his knife and fork fall noisily on the table, and turning to our guilty-looking cook, "of all the pure—"

But I am sure, the reader will agree with me that under such trying circumstances, my friend should not now have recorded against him, in cold print, every word he uttered on that occasion.

When Fielding had somewhat relieved his feelings and sat down again, Ovide, in his ludicrous English, tried to throw the blame for what had happened upon the stove, which, he explained, burned much more zealously than he wanted it to; but his lame excuses were cut short by Fielding telling him to take the thing away.

Ovide, however, was a difficult subject to silence, and said apologetically, as he took up the platter: "It's vary much too bad, sir, dat I'm forgot to mak her freeze out before I'm put her in de oven. But de puddin', sir,"—with a sudden revival of his old self-confidence—"no danger of de same trouble with her; I'm sure she's cook vary well all de way over."

Somewhat mollified by the outlook of getting a little of something to eat, Fielding replied somewhat less shortly, "Well, hurry up and bring it along."

As we silently waited for him to return, we heard him noisily lift the kettle containing the now doubly precious pudding off the stove; but scarcely had he done so when he uttered an amazed cry, and a few moments later hurried up to the table again, the big kettle in his hand and his eyes fairly bulging with excitement.

"See! Monsieur," he exclaimed, almost superstitiously, as he halted at my side and pointed to the mouth of the kettle, "see de size dat puddin' she's now! When I'm put her in she's so small dat she's go in easy; but now look! she's swell, and swell, and swell till she's fill all de kettle inside, and now she's tree times too big for de mouth, and she won't come out."

I glanced down, and true enough, the pudding had assumed alarming proportions. Little wonder the problem of getting the thing intact out of the kettle's small mouth had caused him such woful distress.

"Well," I said impatiently, "go pour off the water and take it out in sections; if there is more pudding than you expected, so much the better; there seems little chance of us getting anything else to eat."

As he was scudding away to carry out my instructions, Robbins, whose sharp eyes had seen the freak in the kettle, said to Ovide in an undertone, "Thou hast not forgotten, lad, to take the frost out of that, anyway."

After a very brief absence, Ovide hurried back again, bearing aloft the most marvellous pudding human eyes, I am persuaded, ever rested upon. Apart from the pitiful manner in which it had been rent and torn asunder, its complexion was such as to attract the most lively interest—no chronic sufferer from jaundice ever sported such a gorgeous yellow. The mystery of its unwonted complexion was solved the moment he laid it on the table: the car was permeated with the rank odor of baking powder.

Out of pure curiosity, I put a piece of the pudding into my mouth. It was something awful! A spoonful of pure baking powder could not have tasted much worse. It had been only partially cooked, too.

Fielding gave Ovide one look, and then, too full for speech, he pushed back his chair and strode to the other end of the car.

Slowly I leaned back in my chair and fixed my eyes on the face of the now thoroughly craven-looking Ovide. "What made you tell us you knew how to cook?" I asked, trying hard to speak without anger, but in utter failure. The cravings of the inner man, just then, were strong upon me.

After all the fellow was not without some redeeming trait, for he made a clean breast of it. "It is dis way," he began remorsefully, "when I'm tak de job for cook to-day I'm tink, for sure, I know de way for do it. De reason I get idea like dat, is this way: When I'm be little boy and sit in de kitchen and see my mudder bake de bread, and boil de puddin', and rost de meat, I'm say to myself, many time, 'Ovide, you can do little easy ting like dat, just so well as she can.' I'm ax my mudder, too, many time to let me try and mak de dinner, but she laugh loud and say, 'Ovide, you just lak all de boys and lots of men too, for dey all tink dat it's just so easy for de woman to cook de food as it is for dem to eat it.' And den she laugh some more, and say dat all de men tink dat what de womans do is noting at all."

As he paused, I had no small difficulty in preserving the severity of my countenance, owing to certain recollections of thoughts I had indulged in when a boy—and, I must admit, a pretty big one, too—when I had sat and watched my mother cook. From the way Fielding, at the other end of the car, put his hands into his pockets, I got the impression that conscience was hard at work with him, too.

"Even after I'm be away from home all dese years," continued Ovide, "I'm still have dat feeling dat I can cook just so well as she can; and so when I'm come into de car to-day and hear Mr. Fielding say dat he want cook, and say dat he will give a souvenir, and when I'm see, too, dat engine-driver man Robbin, dare, dat I'm not lak at all, and who I tink not know how for cook and yet going for get de job—I'm just tink dat a good chance she's come for me to please de bosses and make somethin' good for myself, and so I'm come straight out, and say I'm de best man for de job. And dat's all de truth."

He had been slowly edging his way to the passage leading to the door, and as he reached it he continued regretfully, "If I'm only not forget to freeze out dat turkey before I'm put her in de oven, and tink too not to put nearly cupful bakin' powder in de puddin', everyting she's be all right den, sure." As he concluded he turned abruptly down the passage, and fled out of our car into the baggage-car, with Robbins' rasping cough in his ears.

* * * * *

Half an hour later, thanks to old Robbins' skill, we sat down to fried turkey, boiled potatoes, bread and butter, and tea.

The great French-Canadian cook gladly ate his portion of the banquet in the baggage-car, for no amount of persuasion could make him come to the table with us.

Twelve hours later we reached our homes.

On New Year's Day, a bulky blue envelope was handed to Ovide. As it bore the stamp of the General Manager's office, he opened it with fear and trembling, for he was sure that it contained his dismissal. I shall not attempt to describe his gratification when he found it contained a handsome silver watch, on the inside of which was neatly engraved a belligerent-looking turkey. The note from Fielding, accompanying the gift, read as follows: "May the souvenir bring as many pleasant memories to the receiver as the memory of Christmas Day, 1879, is sure to bring the donor."

* * * * *



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* * * * *



A LOVER IN HOMESPUN.

COMMENTS OF THE PRESS.

"These stories are of good merit and comprise some excellent descriptions of forest and clearing, and a clever delineation of the passions which actuate humanity in the rough.... The stories, eleven in all, deal with love and life and religion in many aspects, and as character studies of the simple Canadian peasantry, French and English, can compare favorably with similar selections in which Scotch, Welsh and Irish rural life have been exploited.... Its readability might be further dwelt upon."—Literary World (London).

"After a careful perusal of 'A Lover in Homespun,' we are impressed with the fact that the author cannot only 'photograph' pictures but 'paint them'; all the characters live, breathe, act, feel and speak naturally. Mr. Smith gives individuality and charm to the personages of his stories, without involving any sacrifice to truth. One thing characterizes every story in the volume, viz., strong dramatic sentiment and situation, and a decided deftness and a naturalness in dialogue. In order to satisfy himself that this estimate of Mr. Smith's powers and work is not an exaggerated one, let the reader take up the book and peruse it. He will find every story interesting." —Herald (Montreal).

"There is not a poor story in this bright entertaining book. Many of the stories touch very high dramatic art—Canada has another writer to be proud of."—Canadian Home Journal.

"There is undoubted power displayed in the stories in this book. Many of the characters are drawn in a natural and picturesque manner, and we hope that on a future occasion Mr. Smith will use the material, that he evidently has on hand, for a long romance. We believe Mr. Smith's appeal to the literary public will be favorably received."—Star (Montreal).

"Mr. Smith's book, 'A Lover in Homespun,' is sure to be found a literary treat by the reading public. His stories have that polished finish which is so difficult to attain, and which makes the short story a work of art."—Canadian Magazine.

"Mr. Smith is a talented writer; his style is pure and he possesses in a high degree the principal gift of a novelist, imagination. Mr. Smith's new book is made up of a dozen short stories, several of which are French-Canadian. The author shows himself very sympathetic to our race."—La Presse (Montreal).

"The contents of this volume give evidence not only of innate capacity for story-telling, but of conscientious elaboration of the various plots. All the stories have their characteristic merits, and they are all Canadian."—Gazette (Montreal).

"A book to be looked for and read, and which is sure to go down to the future."—Our Monthly.

"As a writer of short stories Mr. Smith is truly delightful."—Massey's Magazine.

"The studies of French-Canadian character in this book are exceedingly clever. The stories are peculiarly charming and the volume should certainly be read by French-Canadians."—Le Soir.

"This book is well written, and all the stories are very interesting; some are very amusing, some pathetic and some thrilling. The scene of each is in our own country. The book should certainly sell well."—Christian Guardian.

"Mr. Clifford Smith's book, 'A Lover in Homespun,' gives graphic descriptions of habitant life by one who knows it well, or adventures in the newer Canada of the North-West. The stories have all the same sympathetic quality, the same rapid movement and strong situations, and clever use of French-Canadian dialect which made Mr. Thomson's stories so successful."—Onward.

* * * * *

TORONTO: WILLIAM BRIGGS. Montreal: C.W. COATES. Halifax: S.F. HUESTIS.

THE END