As I was the only lady in the Palace having the faintest theoretical or practical idea of the art of cooking, I was chosen to guide the children in their first attempts. Two footmen preceded us, carrying firewood, matches and coal, with which they were to start the little tiled stove, while half a dozen children followed with flour, eggs, butter, milk, and other materials, all of which had been commandeered from the royal kitchens. The stoutest heart might have quailed, the best cook in the world might have trembled, at the enterprise I had undertaken. To cook, or rather to teach a lot of riotous, screaming children to cook--on a stove whose capacities were not yet known, in a kitchen supplied chiefly with inadequate and doll-like utensils--a sort of combined tea and supper to which an Emperor and Empress and goodness knew how many more people had been hospitably, but I could not but feel recklessly, invited! It was very hot. Mosquitoes swarmed everywhere. The chimney smoked relentlessly till one of the footmen discovered a damper. The wood was wet. There was no water, no knives and forks, and we had forgotten the salt; but the affair had to be a success, and we set out perseveringly to carry it through. The Princess had decided that we would have pancakes for tea--the usual English kind made with eggs and milk--and the six children were accordingly sent outside on to the veranda to beat eggs, while I tried to review my forces and collect a few ideas--a dreadful business with a swarm of children, asking questions in the rather loud-voiced German way, running up to show their eggs, or spilling them on the floor, while not a single cup or saucer was as yet in its place. By some miraculous means we managed to ice a cake with chocolate--a sheer _tour-de-force_ of inventive genius, for I had never done such a thing before in my life. We cut quantities of very thin bread and butter, at which one of the footmen displayed unsuspected dexterity. The much-beaten eggs duly mixed with flour and milk made excellent pancakes. Each child had “tasted” of them liberally, pronouncing them “_Grossartig! Prachtvoll!_” All too soon the Emperor and Empress were seen wending their way in our direction, accompanied, to the Princess’s great indignation, by two adjutants. “I never invited the gentlemen,” she said in tones of annoyance; “there won’t be half enough pancakes to go round.” I remained discreetly in the background in the kitchen, concentrating my mind on frying. The tea was good because it was just freshly made, and the pancakes for the same reason, hot from the fire and spared the usual long journey down the tunnel from the Palace kitchens, were, in spite of the inadequate doll’s plates on which they had perforce to be served, crisp and toothsome.