Rensselaer Republican, Volume 21, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 August 1889 — It Was the Cook. [ARTICLE]

It Was the Cook.

Percival sat upon a hammock in the back yard of the country boarding* house. His little slippered feet patted i the grass gleefully, and the book, in his hand hung lazily athwart the gunwales of the swinging net-work of the aerial couch. There was a cynical expression upon his innocent face, and his Titian mustache curled like the tail of a full-blooded pug. There was a titter. It oould not be called a laugh. There was a distinctly audible titter swashing against the leaven of the locust trees above'him. It came from the door, of the kitchen. No human being in sight; and the parrot had never been taught to-titter nor -to-twitter. The ugly-mouthed bird lazily winked his watery eyes as he stood upon his swinging perch. The titter was not his’n. Percival wondered where the titter came from. He determined to investigate. Slowly he knocked the ashes from his malodorous cigarette. Gradually ho permitted his angular and attenuated form to elevate itself into perpendicular longitudinosity. Carefully adjusting his eye-glasses, as a confirmed detective is wont to do, he ambled gracefully towards the kitchen. Some one was behind the door. He pushed it, said “Peekah-ah-booah,” and grasped the embroidered white skirl which protruded. A voice tittered and giggled, and then ejaculated: “G’way sum dab, Massa P’siV’l. Ain’ you ’shamed flirtin’ wid a yallar gal like me?” Lo, Tillie the cook came forth and clamped two glistening yellow arms about his Adams-apple-throat and glued two watermelon-loving lips to the thin compression of mouth of which Percival was so proud. Just then Blanchie, his fiancee, came across the lawn. Percival has returned to his counter la “The Fair,” and will not leave Chicago again during the summer.