Tea For One

A young husband was wakened at five o’clock one morning by his bride. “Is the house on fire?” he mumbled. She laughed merrily. “The dawn is here,” she said, “and I am going to bake a sugar cake.”

“I don’t want a sugar cake, I want toast and coffee,” the bridegroom said.

“The sugar cake’s for you to take for all the boys to see,” she explained.

“All what boys?” demanded her husband, who was still drowsy.

“The boys at the office, silly,” she said. “Let them see it, and then bring it home, and maybe we’ll have it for dinner.”

He got up and started to dress.

“I’ll make tea for both of us now,” she said, singing the line, and adding, “Coffee doesn’t rhyme with anything. You can’t have coffee.”

He had tied his shoes and was tying his tie, when her voice brightened and she clapped her hands. “We’ll raise a family,” she said gaily. “You can have the boy, and I’ll take the girl.” And she scampered down the stairs to start to bake the sugar cake for him to take for all the boys to see. When she had gone, the bridegroom glanced at his watch.

It was eleven minutes after five. He brushed his teeth and[Pg 108] combed his hair, and then he climbed out the bedroom window, dropped to the ground below, and slipped away into the dawn, to find an all-night restaurant where a man could get a meal a man could eat.

MORAL: If life went along like a popular song, every man’s marriage would surely go wrong.