Page:Adventures in Thrift (1916).djvu/163

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to come to the kitchen, your dinner was to be sent to your home in a sort of thermos stove. The table d'hôte, price fifty cents, was to include a soup, a roast, a vegetable, a salad, a dessert and coffee. Every day a post-card folder was to be mailed subscribers, with the dishes to be served the next day, all prices marked for à la carte service. The housekeeper selected her menu in the morning, sent it to the kitchen, and then was free to go to town for shopping or a matinée. When she and her husband came home there would be the family dinner, sitting on the back step in its little thermos stove!"

"But did it?"

"Did it what?" asked Mrs. Larry.

"Did it ever sit, waiting on the back step for its subscribers, stockholders or whatever you call them? Did the kitchen ever really live up to the promises of its prospectus? Did you meet any cooperator who has saved time, trouble and money by and through that kitchen? Any one with an imagination can write a prospectus. What were they doing in that kitchen to-day?"

"Well, now that was just the difficult phase