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 cost