Surely this was unexpected good fortune, and I asked myself if I really deserved such a heaven-sent boon as a silver-medalled cook! I decided, however, that in view of all I had undergone in the past at the hands of those who were not so decorated, it was nothing more than my due that I should be so blessed in my declining years. My only regret was that war-time would allow so little scope for her genius! Feeling very light-hearted, and wondering how she would get on with Abigail when cook gave one of her periodical notices and I placed Eileen on the permanent staff, I said: “Then I needn’t bother about the breakfast! We will have poached eggs on toast. I’ll lay the cloth while you get them ready.” But she looked at me doubtfully. “We didn’t ever have _poached_ eggs at the boarding-house,” she began. “But I think I know how to do ’em. You just break them on the gridiron over the top of the fire, don’t you?” After all, it was I who poached the eggs, while Eileen explained that the medal had been awarded to the cookery class at the orphanage _en bloc_, for making a Swiss roll. . . . No, unfortunately, she didn’t know how to make Swiss roll either, as she had been down with scarlet fever that term. Still, it was her class that got the medal, so of course she had as much right to it as anyone else. I trust I bore the disappointment complacently. I’m fairly hardened to such sudden drops in the kitchen thermometer. The great thing about Eileen was her willingness, and her anxiety to learn. When I was seeking to impart knowledge, however, she seemed to think it was for her also to contribute some general information. Hence our duologues often ran on these lines:— “When you make the tea or coffee, be sure that the water is _quite_ boiling; or else——” “Yes, ma’am. Do you know, one of the young gentlemen where I used to live, couldn’t help being bald, no matter if he used a whole bottle of hair restorer every day. It ran in his fambly.” “Really! Well, now we’ll fry some bacon. You put a little of the bacon fat from this jar into the pan first of all to get hot. Like this.” “Yes, ma’am. Isn’t it strange, grandmother won’t never have red roses in her bonnet. Can’t bear red.” She also excelled in asking questions; from morn till eve life seemed one long series of conundrums which I was expected to answer. I never realized before how many queries country life presents; hitherto it had seemed to me such a simple, straightforward state of existence. An old man had been secured to do an occasional odd day’s work (at highest London prices). He described some misfortune that, last autumn, had befallen “Hussy,” the cow who comes for change of air into my orchard at intervals—an apple she had eaten (one of mine, of course) being blamed for the fact that her milk turned off, “like vinegar ’twas.” Eileen—in common with every other young human under twenty years of age—thrilled at the word apple, and inquired if “Hussy” had stolen it off a tree?