_Method._—Cut the ox-tail into joints and blanch it. Fry it well in the butter, add the vegetables washed and sliced, the mace, herbs, salt, and the stock, and simmer four hours. Strain and pick out the pieces of meat; take off the fat and return to the saucepan. Thicken with three ounces of brown thickening. Put in the pieces of ox-tail and the soup is ready. PUFF PASTRY. _Ingredients._—Two pounds of Vienna flour, two pounds of butter, lemon juice, water to mix, two yolks of eggs. _Method._—Rub the flour through a hair sieve; wash the butter and rub one-third into the flour. Turn this on to the paste-board and make a well in the middle. Beat the yolks of two eggs with a gill of water and a little lemon juice and mix into the flour, adding more water if necessary until you have a flexible dough. Roll out to a strip, shape the butter to a third the size of the dough and lay it on; fold the dough over and roll out; repeat this and put it away to cool. Roll out again and repeat this four times. Roll out, cut as required, and use. For patties, cut into rounds with a cutter about the size of a wine-glass and mark it at the top with a smaller cutter. Bake in a very hot oven a pale golden brown, and when baked lift off the lid and scoop out the inside; fill with the required mixture and put on the lid again. _Mixture for Oyster Patties._—Strain the liquor from two dozen oysters and put it to boil for ten minutes with a blade of mace, three peppercorns, a little lemon rind, and some salt; strain and mix with a gill of cream. Work half an ounce of butter with as much cornflour as it will take up, stir it into the liquor and boil up over the fire; cut the oysters in small pieces, put them into the sauce and heat gently for a few minutes without letting it boil again. PISTACHIO CREAM. _Ingredients._—One pint of double cream, the whites of two fresh eggs, four ounces of castor sugar, a quarter of a pound of pistachios (chopped and blanched), one ounce of leaf gelatine, two tablespoonfuls of water, a half-pint packet of lemon jelly. _Method._—Take a plain round cake-mould that will hold a quart, and line the sides of it with lemon jelly. Sprinkle the bottom over with chopped pistachio, using a little melted jelly to set it. Whip a pint of double cream to a stiff froth, and mix it lightly with the stiffly beaten whites of two fresh eggs and the castor sugar (sifted). Pound the pistachios in a mortar, and add the sweetened cream to this. Have ready the gelatine, and when it is lukewarm stir it quickly into the cream. Pour at once into the prepared mould. Before the wedding-day, Jane, Ada, and Marion had a little tea-party at “The Rowans,” at which it must be confessed they talked a great deal and ate very little. “Well, we have had a very happy year at all events,” said Ada, “and if _circumstances_ had not upset our previous arrangements, I should have been quite content to go on in the same way for a long time.”