"No?" he responded tentatively. "I'm sorry. I thought the other night----" "Oh yes," she broke in, "I was very glad to go, the other night, to that place, very glad. But, you see, I'd never been in a restaurant before." "Really?" "No," she said, "and I felt as if I should like to try one. And the young lady at the post office had told me that _that_ one was a splendid one. So it is. It's beautiful. But of course they ought to be ashamed to offer you such food. Now do you remember that sole? Sole! It was no more sole than this glove's sole. And if it had been cooked a minute, it had been cooked an hour, and waiting. And then look at the prices. Oh yes, I couldn't help seeing the bill." "I thought it was awfully cheap," said he. "Well, _I_ didn't!" said she. "When you think that a good housekeeper can keep everything going on ten shillings a head a _week_.... Why, it's simply scandalous! And I suppose this place is even dearer?" He avoided the question. "This is a better place altogether," he said. "In fact, I don't know many places in Europe where one can eat better than one does here." "Don't you?" she said indulgently, as if saying, "Well, I know one, at any rate." "They say," he continued, "that there is no butter used in this place that costs less than three shillings a pound." "_No_ butter costs them three shillings a pound," said she. "Not in London," said he. "They have it from Paris." "And do you believe that?" she asked. "Yes," he said. "Well, I don't. Any one that pays more than one-and-nine a pound for butter, _at the most_, is a fool, if you'll excuse me saying the word. Not but what this is good butter. I couldn't get as good in Putney for less than eighteen pence." She made him feel like a child who has a great deal to pick up from a kindly but firm sister. "No, thank you," she said, a little dryly, to the waiter who proffered a further supply of chip potatoes. "Now don't say they're cold," Priam laughed. And she laughed also. "Shall I tell you one thing that puts me against these restaurants?" she went on. "It's the feeling you have that you don't know where the food's _been_. When you've got your kitchen close to your dining-room and you can keep an eye on the stuff from the moment the cart brings it, well, then, you do know a bit where you are. And you can have your dishes served hot. It stands to reason," she said. "Where is the kitchen here?" "Somewhere down below," he replied apologetically. "A cellar kitchen!" she exclaimed. "Why, in Putney they simply can't let houses with cellar kitchens. No! No restaurants and hotels for me--not for _choice_--that is, regularly." "Still," he said, with a judicial air, "hotels are very convenient." "Are they?" she said, meaning, "Prove it." "For instance, here, there's a telephone in every room." "You don't mean in the bedrooms?" "Yes, in every bedroom."