"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 Marchesa has to teach."

"My dear Colonel Trestrail," said the Marchesa, "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 least as much mental application to roast a fowl as to cut a bodice; but it does not strike the average Englishwoman in this way, for she will spend 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 to 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. "That saying, 'What I like is good plain roast and boiled, and none of your foreign kickshaws,' is, as every one knows, the stock utterance of John 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 responsible for the waste and want of variety in the 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 it means also lots of scraps and bones and waste 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, apres trots nun's d'insomnie les plumes vent placees.' 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."

"Really, this indictment of English cookery makes me a little nervous," said Lady Considine "I have promised to join in a driving tour through the southern counties. I shudder to think of the dinners I shall have to eat at the commercial hotels and posting-houses on our route."

"English country inns are not what they ought to be, but now and then you come across one which is very good indeed, as good, if not better, than anything you could find in any other country; but I fear I must admit that, charges considered, the balance is against us," said Sir John.

"When you start you ought to secure Sir John's services as courier, Lady Considine," said the Marchesa. "I once had the pleasure of driving for a week through the Apennines in a party under his guidance, and I can assure you we found him quite honest and obliging."

"Ah, Marchesa, I was thinking of that happy time this very morning," said Sir John. "Of Arezzo, where we were kept for three days by rain, which I believe is falling there still. Of Cortona, with that wonderful little restaurant on the edge of the cliff, whence you see Thrasumene lying like a silver mirror in the plain below. Of Perugia, the august, of Gubbio, Citta di Castello, Borgo San Sepolcro, Urbino, and divers others. If you go for a drive in Italy, you still may meet with humours of the road such as travellers of old were wont to enjoy. I well remember on the road between Perugia and Gubbio we began to realise we were indeed traversing mountain paths. On a sudden the driver got down, waved his arms, and howled to some peasants working in a field below. These, on their part, responded with more arm-waving and howling, directed apparently towards a village farther up the hill, whereupon we were assailed with visions of brigands, and amputated ears, and ransom. But at a turn of the road we came upon two magnificent white oxen, which, being harnessed on in front, drew us, and our carriages and horses as well, up five miles of steep incline. These beautiful fellows, it seemed, were what the driver was signalling for, and not for brigands. Again, every inn we stayed at supplied us with some representative touch of local life and habit. Here the whole personnel of the inn, reinforced by a goodly contingent of the townsfolk, would accompany us even into our bedrooms, and display the keenest interest in the unpacking of our luggage. There the cook would come and take personal instructions as to the coming meal, throwing out suggestions the while as to the merits of this or that particular dish, and in one place the ancient chambermaid insisted that one of the ladies, who had got a slight cold, should have the prete put into her bed for a short time to warm it. You need not look shocked, Colonel. The prete in question was merely a wooden frame, in the midst of which hangs a scaldino filled with burning ashes—a most comforting ecclesiastic, I can assure you. All the inns we visited had certain characteristics in common. The entrance is always dirty, and the staircase too, the dining rooms fairly comfortable, the bedrooms always clean and good, and the food much better than you would expect to find in such out-of-the-way places; indeed I cannot think of any inn where it was not good and wholesome, while often it was delicious. In short, Lady Considine, I strongly advise you to take a drive in Italy next spring, and if I am free I shall be delighted to act as courier."

"Sir John has forgotten one or two touches I must fill in," said the Marchesa. "It was often difficult to arrange a stopping-place for lunch, so we always stocked our basket before starting. After the first day's experience we decided that it was vastly more pleasant to take our meal while going uphill at a foot-pace, than in the swing and jolt of a descent, so the route and the pace of the horses had to be regulated in order to give us a good hour's ascent about noon. Fortunately hills are plentiful in this part of Italy, and in the keen air we generally made an end of the vast store of provisions we laid in, and the generous fiascho was always empty a little too soon. Our drive came to an end at Fano, whither we had gone on account of a strange romantic desire of Sir John to look upon an angel which Browning had named in one of his poems. Ah! how vividly I can recall our pursuit of that picture. It was a wet, melancholy day. The people of Fano were careless of the fame of their angel, for no one knew the church which it graced. At last we came upon it by the merest chance, and Sir John led the procession up to the shrine, where we all stood for a time in positions of mock admiration. Sir John tried hard to keep up the imposition, but something, either his innate honesty or the chilling environment of disapproval of Guercino's handiwork, was too much for him. He did his best to admire, but the task was beyond his powers, and he raised no protest when some scoffer affirmed that, though Browning might be a great poet, he was a mighty poor judge of painting, when he gave in his beautiful poem immortality to this tawdry theatrical canvas. 'I think,' said Sir John, 'we had better go back to the hotel and order lunch. It would have been wiser to have ordered it before we left.' We were all so much touched by his penitence that no one had the heart to remind him how a proposition as to lunch had been made by our leading Philistine as soon as we arrived, a proposition waved aside by Sir John as inadmissible until the 'Guardian Angel' should have been seen and admired."

"I plead guilty," said Sir John. "I think this experience gave a death-blow to my career as an appreciator. Anyhow, I quite forget what the angel was like, and for reminiscences of Fano have to fall back upon the excellent colazione we ate in the externally unattractive, but internally admirable, Albergo del Moro."