The Cookery Demonstrator

Our Temperance Hall had become, by sudden transformation, a kitchen. & Cookery Demonstrator was paying us a week's visit and, although most of us had an inward conviction that nothing should wean our husbands from steak and onions and ham and eggs, the local housewives were there in full force to consider the new ideas. Not, I must admit, in a very receptive frame of mind; in fact, the first sight off the kitchen put most of us on the defensive. It was so exasperatingly perfect with ite white-wood and enamel furniture and its brightly coloured bins, and though one woman murmured admiringly: 

“Doesn't it look lovely?" the rest of us gave the grunt that comes from deep and bitter experience. 

“White -wood in a kitchen!” said one mother, voicing the thoughts of the others. “And it shows every mark! Get © few small children running round touching everything with their sticky fingers, and then where would she be?" 

"she's got those cookers that cook by themselves," said a tired looking woman, wistfully, and all eyes turned to the gas-cookers, of the very latest type, and many thoughts dwelt bitterly on uncertain coal-ranges and gas-stoves of a pre-war vintage. 

So it was in a critical mood that we sat awaiting the demonstrator and in an even more critical mood that we received her, for her immaculate cooking suit set us thinking guiltily of our washed-out cretonnes with the permanent petch of grease on the front, and the pocket torn on the oven handle. 

True, we watched with some interest as she began to prepare dinner by making an unusual soup and we agreed, in whispers, as she blended choice ingredients, that it would make a fitting opening for a little dinner for two, but somehow, with George coming in for mid-day diner, and the boys from school, and the babies, and the char, and "May I have a second help, Mummy?" – - well, was it any wonder that someone murmured: 

“If she hed my lot to cater for ..!” 

At this point an assistant appeared with trays and we found ourselves offered snacks of the second course, an admirable fish-mould. We thawed visibly as we tasted, and when we heard that we should later taste not only the soup then in the making, but the tarts shortly to be made, we began to forget our prejudices. But it is doubtful if all the dainty snacks, all the skill and charm of the demonstrator could have so thoroughly swept away the barrier between us and made her, all in a moment, one of ourselves, as did that sudden sound of bubbling which we all knew, that sudden smell which we all recognised, As one woman, our faces alight with fellowship, we cried: "Your soups boiling over?"