ing it often enough. And then
you only told me at two o'clock to-day."

"If a cook can't make soup between two and seven, she can't make it
in a week."

"I hope Mr Grey will excuse it," said Alice.

"Isn't it good?" said he. "I won't say that it is, because I should
be pretending to have an opinion; but I should not have found out
anything against it of myself."

"Where do you dine usually, now you are in London?" Mr Vavasor asked.

"At the old club, at the corner of Suffolk Street. It's the oldest
club in London, I believe. I never belonged to any other, and
therefore can't compare them; but I can't imagine anything much
nicer."

"They give you better soup than ours?" said Alice.

"You've an excellent cook," said Mr Vavasor, with great gravity; "one
of the best second-class cooks in London. We were very nearly getting
him, but you nicked him just in time. I know him well."

"It's a great deal more than I do, or hope to do. There's another
branch of public life for which I'm quite unfitted. I'd as soon be
called on to choose a Prime Minister for the country, as I would a
cook for a club."

"Of course you would," said Mr Vavasor. "There may be as many as a
dozen cooks about London to be looked up, but there are never more
than two possible Prime Ministers about. And as one of them must be
going out when the other is coming in, I don't see that there can be
any difficulty. Moreover, now-a-days, people do their politics for
themselves, but they expect to have their dinners cooked for them."

The little dinner went on quietly and very easily. Mr Vavasor found
fault with nearly everything. But as, on this occasion, the meat
and the drink, with the manner of the eating and drinking, did not
constitute the difficulty, Alice was indifferent to her father's
censures. The thing needed was that she and Mr Grey should be able
to sit together at the same table without apparent consciousness of
their former ties. Alice felt that she was succeeding indifferently
well while she was putting in little mock defences for the cook. And
as for John Grey, he succeeded so well that his success almost made
Alice angry with him. It required no effort with him at all to be
successful in this matter. "If he can forget all that has passed,
so much the better," said Alice to herself when she got up into the
drawing-room. Then she sat herself down on the sofa, and cried. Oh!
what had she not lost! Had any woman ever been so mad, so reckl