p, poultry, vegetables, and fruit
the day before, so that the provision for the feast, though by no means
sumptuous, was far better than any they had been accustomed to for many
months past. The Major's note-book enables me to set the materials for
the dinner, and also its cost, before the reader--viz. a sheep's head,
price sixteen shillings (my grandfather was too late to secure any of
the body, which was rent in pieces, and the fragments carried off as if
by wolves, ere the breath was well out of it)--a couple of fowls, twenty
shillings (scraggy creatures, says my ancestor in a parenthesis)--a ham,
two guineas--raisins and flour for a pudding, five shillings--eggs (how
many, the deponent sayeth not), sixpence each--vegetables, nine and
sixpence--and fruit for dessert, seven and tenpence. Then, for wine, a
Spanish merchant, a friend of Carlota's, had sent them two bottles of
champagne and one of amontillado, a present as generous then as a
hogshead would have been in ordinary times; and there was, moreover,
some old rum, and two lemons for punch. Altogether, there was probably
no dinner half so good that day in Gibraltar.

At the appointed hour, the Major was reading in his quarters (a
tolerably commodious house near the South Barracks, and at some distance
outside the town) when Owen appeared.

"You're punctual, my boy; and punctuality's a cardinal virtue about
dinner-time," said my grandfather, looking at his watch; "three o'clock
exactly. And now we'll have dinner. I only hope the new cook is a
tolerable proficient."

"What's become of Mrs Grigson?" asked Owen. "You haven't parted with
that disciple of Apicius, I should hope?"

"She's confined again," said my grandfather, sighing; "a most prolific
woman that! It certainly can't be above half-a-year since her last child
was born, and she's just going to have another. 'Tis certainly not
longer ago than last autumn," he added, musingly.

"A wonderful woman," said Owen; "she ought to be purchased by the
Government, and sent out to some of our thinly-populated colonies. And
who fills her place?"

"Why, I'll tell you," responded the Major. "Joe Trigg, my old servant,
is confined too--in the guardroom, I mean, for getting drunk--and I've
taken a man of the regiment, one Private Bags, for a day or two, who
recommended his wife as an excellent cook. She says the same of herself;
but this is her first trial, and I'm a little nervous about it."

"Shocking rascal that B