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A PASSING FAD 21
One evening after Mr. Davis had started to eat his soup, he stopped suddenly and an expression of pained displeasure crossed his face. He beckoned to Father, who hurried to the wealthy man's table.
"Something wrong, Mr Davis?"
"There certainly is, Albert. A most disgusting thing has happened. There is a cockroach in my soup."
Father's heart skipped a beat, but his expression never changed. He knew that if Mr. Davis thought that he had been served onion soup with a cockroach in it he would never return.
"You must be mistaken, Mr. Davis," he said. "We have no cockroaches in our kitchen."
"What do you call that?" demanded Mr. Davis, pointing to a dark object in the soup.
Father looked, shrugged, picked up a clean spoon, and dipped the offending object from the soup. Without hesitation he raised it to his lips, popped it into his mouth, chewed for a moment, then smacked his lips.
"Only a piece of onion that was overbrowned, Mr. Davis," he said. "I assure you it won't happen again."
Mr. Davis was extremely apologetic, explaining that he had come away from the office without his glasses. He should have known that Albert would never allow a cockroach to get into the onion soup. Father bowed, smiled, then retreated to the kitchen and gave the chef a dressing down.
When Father finished telling us this story Henry and I asked in unison, "But was it a cockroach, Papa?"
He and Mother exchanged glances and then Father shrugged. "How can I tell?" he answered. "They say that a French fried onion and a cockroach taste exactly the same."
Some of Father's best stories concerned the various escapades of his chefs and the trouble they caused him. He used to have a great deal of difficulty getting satisfactory chefs and he came to the conclusion that good ones were always slightly daft. He claimed that if a chef led a normal, law-abiding life he was no