“Some nice little fillets I think master likes, m’m.” “Yes, Ruth, fish, cutlets, and a pudding. I suppose a batter pudding would take too many eggs?” “Oh, no, m’m, not at all. I could manage with two nicely.” “Very well then; that will do beautifully. We always like your batter puddings so much better than those they have at Buckingham Palace; they are so much lighter, and that jam sauce you make is a dream. And, by the way” (this is just as I am leaving the kitchen), “we must have another curry some day; Admiral Tobasco said he had never met one to touch yours that night.” “Would you care to have the mutton curried to-day, m’m, as a change from the haricot?” “Oh, yes, Ruth, that would be delightful. What a good idea.” But it takes years to learn. New dishes are acquired in the same way. This is what the novice does: “Ruth, I want you to try this beef _à la_ Soudanese, it is quite simple.” “Beef what, m’m?” “Beef _à la_ Soudanese. You see it is done in this way.” I read the recipe, while Ruth turns away in silence and begins sweeping up the hearth. “Well, Ruth, what do you think of it?” “Oh, just as you please’m, of course.” “It is quite easy, isn’t it?” There is a sudden convulsion amongst the fire-irons, and Ruth turns round wiping her eyes. “Of course, it must be as you like, m’m. It’s your place to give orders, I know, but I’m afraid I shall never give satisfaction the way I am. My mother’d tell you--and indeed I’d sooner she came and spoke to you herself--that I never had no training in fancy dishes, and all you asked for was a good plain cook, which I am, as her ladyship said herself when I left. Of course, you’d very likely not know, being a young lady and having no experience in such things, that we poor girls have to make our own way, and to be respectable is as much as we can hope for, and that I always have been, and I’d sooner starve than take a place where I couldn’t do my duty, and I think it would be better if you were to get some one more experienced; I haven’t been feeling at all settled lately, the way things have been”--and so on. If by chance your mind’s ribs are made of steel and your sympathies of spun granite, as some women’s are, this network of unintelligible wrath will have no power to ensnare you, but the average woman takes years to unwind herself from the thraldom of female hysteria--and then she wriggles out of it by guile. “Ruth,” I say now, “we had a lovely dish at the club last night. They made a great fuss about it, and said only an expert could cook it, but I believe that your clever brain could find out what it is made of. It looked like--” and then I describe it. Ruth makes a wild conjecture and says it sounds very like the _à la_ Marengo that master likes so much. “I don’t know whether it is quite that,” I say thoughtfully, “but we might look in one of the cookery books and see whether there is anything like it to start on.”