ed very well, though my first essay in that difficult
art was rewarded with dire and complete failure.

It was a chicken! Now, as all the chickens had names--Sultan, Duke, Lord
Tom Noddy, Lady Teazle, and so forth--and as I was very proud of them as
living birds, it was a great wrench to kill one at all, to start with.
It was the murder of Sultan, not the killing of a chicken. However, at
last it was done, and Sultan deprived of his feathers, floured, and
trussed. I had no idea _how_ this was all done, but I tried to make him
"sit up" nicely like the chickens in the shops.

He came up to the table looking magnificent--almost turkey-like in his
proportions.

"Hasn't this chicken rather an odd smell?" said our visitor.

"How can you!" I answered. "It must be quite fresh--it's Sultan!"

However, when we began to carve, the smell grew more and more potent.

_I had cooked Sultan without taking out his in'ards!_

There was no dinner that day except bread-sauce, beautifully made,
well-cooked vegetables, and pastry like the foam of the sea. I had a
wonderful hand for pastry!

My hour of rising at this pleasant place near Mackery End in
Hertfordshire was six. Then I washed the babies. I had a perfect mania
for _washing_ everything and everybody. We had one little servant, and I
insisted on washing her head. Her mother came up from the village to
protest.

"Never washed her head in my life. Never washed any of my children's
heads. And just look at their splendid hair!"

After the washing I fed the animals. There were two hundred ducks and
fowls to feed, as well as the children. By the time I had done this, and
cooked the dinner, the morning had flown away. After the midday meal I
sewed. Sometimes I drove out in the pony-cart. And in the evening I
walked across the common to fetch the milk. The babies used to roam
where they liked on this common in charge of a bulldog, while I sat and
read.

I studied cookery-books instead of parts--Mrs. Beeton instead of
Shakespeare!

Of course, I thought my children the most brilliant and beautiful
children in the world, and, indeed, "this side idolatry," they were
exceptional, and they had an exceptional bringing up. They were allowed
no rubbishy picture-books, but from the first Japanese prints and fans
lined their nursery walls, and Walter Crane was their classic. If
injudicious friends gave the wrong sort of present, it was promptly
burned. A mechanical mouse in which Edy, my