"We are getting unpleasantly near the end of our time," said the Colonel, "but I am sure not one of us has learnt one tithe of what the Mar-chesa has to teach."

"My dear Colonel Trestrail," said the Mar-chesa, "an education in cookery does not mean the teaching of a certain number of recipes. Education, I maintain, is something far higher than the mere imparting of facts; my notion of it is the teaching of people to teach themselves, and this is what I have tried to do in the kitchen. With some of you I am sure I have succeeded, and a book containing the recipe of every dish we have tried will be given to every pupil when we break up."

"I think the most valuable lesson I have learnt is that cookery is a matter for serious study," said Mrs. Sinclair. "The popular English view seems to be that it is one of those things which gets itself done. The food is subjected to the action of heat, a little butter, or pepper, or onion, being added by way of flavouring, and the process is complete. To put it bluntly, it requires at leaat as much mental application to roast a fowl as cut a bodice;' but it does not strike the average Englishwoman in this way, for she will spen hours in thinking and talking about dressmaking (which is generally as ill done as her cooking while she will be reluctant to give ten minutes the consideration as to how a luncheon or supper dish shall be prepared. The English middle classes are most culpably negligent about the food they eat, "and as a consequence they get exactly the sort of cooks they deserve to get. I do not blame the cooks; if they can get paid for cooking ill, why should they trouble to learn to cook well?"

"I agree entirely," said Mrs. Wilding. "The saying, 'What I like is good plain roast and boiled, and none of your foreign kickshaws,' as every one knows, the stock utterance of Job Bull on the stage or in the novel; and, though John Bull is not in the least like his fictitious presentment, this form of words is largely re-sponsible for the waste and want of variety in tl English kitchen. The plain roast and boiled means a joint every day, and this arrangement the good plain cook finds an admirable one for several reasons: it means little trouble, and means also lots of scraps and bones and was pieces. The good plain cook brings all the forces of obstruction to bear whenever the mistress suggests made dishes; and, should this suggestion ever be carried out, she takes care that the achievement shall be of a character not likely to invite repetition. Not long ago a friend of mine was questioning a cook as to soups, whereupon the cook answered' that she had never been required to make such things where she had lived; all soups were bought in tins or bottles, and had simply to be warmed up.

Cakes, too, were outside her repertoire, having always been ' had in' from the confectioner's, while 'entrys' were in her opinion, and in the opinion of her various mistresses, 'un'ealthy' and not worth making."

"My experience is that, if a mistress takes an interest in cooking, she will generally have a fairly efficient cook," said Mrs. Fothergill. "I agree with Mrs. Sinclair that our English cooks are spoilt by neglect; and I think it is hard upon them, as a class, that so many inefficient women should be able to pose as cooks while they are unable to boil a potato properly."

"And the so-called schools of cookery are quite useless in what they teach," said Miss Macdonnell. "I once sent a cook of mine to one to learn how to make a clear soup, and when she came back, she sent up, as an evidence of her progress, a potato pie coloured pink and green - a most poisonous-looking dish - and her clear soups were as bad as ever."

Said the Colonel, "I will beg leave to enter a protest against the imperfections of that repast which is supposed to be the peculiar delight of the ladies - I allude to afternoon tea. I want to" know why it is that unless I happen to call just when the tea is brought up - I grant, I know of a few houses which are honourable exceptions - I am fated to drink that most abominable of all decoctions, stewed lukewarm tea. 'Will you have some tea? I'm afraid it isn't quite fresh,' the hostess will remark without a blush. What would she think if her husband at dinner were to say, 'Colonel, take a glass of that champagne. It was opened the day before yesterday, and I daresay the fizz has gone off a little'? Tea is cheap enough, and yet the hostess seldom or never thinks of ordering up a fresh pot. I believe it is because she is afraid of the butler."

"I sympathise with you fully, Colonel," said Lady Considine, "and my withers are unwrung. You do not often honour me with your presence on Tuesdays, but I am sure I may claim to be one of your honourable exceptions."

"Indeed you may," said the Colonel. "Perhaps men ought not to intrude on these occasions; but I have a preference for taking tea in a pretty drawing-room, with a lot of agreeable women, rather than in a club surrounded by old chaps growling over the latest job at the War Office, and a younger brigade chattering about the latest tape prices, and the weights for the spring handicaps."

"All these little imperfections go to prove that we are not a nation of cooks," said Van der Roet. "We can't be everything. Heine once said that the Romans would never have found time to conquer the world if they had been obliged to learn the Latin grammar; and it is the same with us. We can't expect to found an empire all over the planet, and cook as well as the French, who - perhaps wisely - never willingly emerge from the four corners of their own land."

"There is energy enough left in us when we set about some purely utilitarian task," said Mrs. Wilding, "but we never throw ourselves into the arts with the enthusiasm of the Latin races. I was reading the other day of a French costumier who rushed to inform a lady, who had ordered a turban, of his success, exclaiming, 'Madame, après trois nuits d'insomnie les plumes sont placèes.' And every one knows the story of Vatel's suicide because the fish failed to arrive. No Englishman would be capable of flights like these."