Besides the accomplishments I have mentioned, I had also some ideas as to foreign cookery, which I picked up here and there on our travels--chiefly on the rare occasions when we were in lodgings anywhere. I do not think I ever met any mistress of a lodging-house abroad who did not pride herself particularly upon her cooking of some one dish (sometimes more than that, but at least one), and who was not willing to initiate into its mysteries any lodger who evinced a proper appreciation of its excellence. There was an old woman at Genoa, I remember, at whose house we stayed for some weeks, who knew several delicious ways of dressing macaroni and vegetables, and who not only allowed me to watch her whilst she cooked, and gave me her favourite recipes, but even stretched her good nature so far as to let me try my own hand in the kitchen till I could join practice to theory, and produce a tolerably successful result for my labours. She was a kindly, motherly old soul, who was impressed with the notion that there was something peculiarly forlorn and provocative of pity in my condition; she generally called me _poverina_ (to my amusement), and took me under her protection from an early stage of our acquaintance. "See, _Signorina_," she said to me on the second morning of our occupying her apartments, "you will no doubt wish to buy velvet here--as all the English do--and many other things also. But be guided by me, and go not to buy alone, or you will most certainly be cheated. No! when you see the thing that you desire, come to me--take me to where it is--point it out to me quietly. Then will I go forward as though to buy it for myself, and so shall you procure it at a reasonable price. You who understand not the modes of our merchants, would pay nearly, or perhaps even altogether--for there is no saying how far the folly of an English person may go!--the amount that they demand for their goods. But as for me!--ah! _I_ know how to arrange these people, and you shall see what I will do! I dare to flatter myself that there is not a man or woman in the whole of Genoa who can get the better of me in a bargain!"