“No, indeed,” said Patty; “I’ll feed it on strawberries and cream all the year round!”

That same afternoon Patty and Aunt Alice started out on a cook-hunting expedition.  A Cook’s Tour, Frank called it; and the tourists took it very seriously.

“Much of the success of your home, Patty,” said Aunt Alice, as they were going to the Intelligence Office, “depends upon your cook; for she will be not only a cook, but, in part, housekeeper, and overseer of the whole place.  And while you must, of course, exercise your authority and demand respect, yet at the same time you will find it necessary to defer to her judgment and experience on many occasions.”

“I know it, Aunt Alice,” said Patty very earnestly; “and I do want to do what is right.  I want to be the head of papa’s home, and yet there are a great many things that my servants will know more about than I do.  I shall have to be very careful about my proportion; but if you and papa will help me, I think I’ll come out all right.”

“I think you will,” said Aunt Alice, but she smiled a little at the assured toss of her niece’s head.

The Intelligence Office proved to be as much misnamed as those institutions usually are, and varying degrees of unintelligence were shown in the candidates offered for the position of cook at Boxley Hall; though, if the applicants seemed unsatisfactory to Patty, in many cases she was no less so to them.

One tall, rawboned Irishwoman seemed hopefully good-tempered and capable, but when she discovered that Patty was to be her mistress, instead of Mrs. Elliott, as she had supposed, she exclaimed: 

“Go ‘way wid yez!  Wud I be workin’ for the likes of a child like that?  No, mum, I ain’t no nurse; I’m a cook, and I want a mistress as has got past playing wid dolls.”

“I hope you’ll find one,” said Patty politely; “and I’m afraid we wouldn’t suit each other.”

Another Irish girl, with a merry rosy face and frizzled blonde hair, was very anxious to go to work for Patty.

“Sure, it will be fun!” she said.  “I’d like to work for such a pretty little lady; and, sure, we’d have the good times.  Could I have all me afternoons out, miss?”

“Not if you lived with me,” said Patty, laughing.  “My house is large, and there’s a great deal of work to be done by somebody.  I think my cook couldn’t do her share if she went out every afternoon.”

Many others were interviewed, but each seemed to have more or less objectionable traits.  One would not come unless she were the only servant; another would not come unless Patty kept five.  Most of them showed such a decided lack of respect to so young a mistress that Aunt Alice began to despair of finding the kind, capable woman she had imagined.  They went home feeling rather discouraged, but when Patty told her troubles to her father, he only laughed.

“Bless your heart, child,” he said; “you couldn’t expect to engage a whole cook in one afternoon!  It’s a long and serious process.”