And now to look at the bill of fare. There are no such foreign innovations as _hors d'œuvre_ allowed at Simpson's, where the only concessions to France are in the wine cellar and that little French rolls as well as household bread are in the bread baskets. You can obtain a fish dinner of three kinds of fish for three and ninepence; but we will order just what we feel our appetite demands, and take no account of set dinners. If your taste is for turtle soup, a plate of that luxury will cost you three shillings, but, if one of the simpler British soups will content you, hare, pea, mock turtle, Scotch hotch-potch, oxtail, giblet or mulligatawny are priced at one shilling or one and sixpence. Then comes the important question of fish, and the choice really lies between a _Sole Souchet_, which Simpson's ought to write _Zouchet_, boiled codfish and oyster sauce, and boiled turbot and lobster sauce--the last one of the dishes on which Simpson's prides itself. Until I chatted with Mr Wheeler on the subject I always understood that a turbot to come to table in perfection should be hung for several days, but Mr Wheeler denounces this as rank heresy. A turbot should be nicked to draw off the blood of the fish, it should be soaked for twenty-four hours, and then it is ready to be boiled. It is instructive to watch a real habitué of Simpson's who prefers cod to turbot when a portly white-clad carver wheels his waggon up to the table. There must be the right proportion of liver with the fish and the due quantity of oyster in the sauce, or there will be dire threats of report to higher quarters. A boiled potato to anyone who knows what is good English fare is not to be accepted without criticism, and he would be a bold carver who dared to give the knowledgeable man a helping of saddle of mutton without a slice of the brown. But before we go on to the supreme matter of the saddle let me point out to you that whether you eat sole, or cod, or turbot, it means an item of two shillings on your bill. The joints ring the changes on roast sirloin, boiled beef, boiled leg of mutton, roast loin of veal and bath chap, and saddle of mutton, and it is the saddle that is the favourite dish. Forty saddles a day is the quantity consumed at Simpson's, and now that the new room is opened sixty are required. Simpson's employs a buyer whose duty in life is to travel about England buying saddles wherever the finest mutton is to be procured. For fourteen days the saddles hang in the stock-room at Simpson's in a temperature of 38°, then they are moved for two or three days to another store, through which there is a current of air, and then they are ready for the fire. And whether you eat of the mutton, the beef, or the veal, your portion and the accompanying vegetables will cost you half-a-crown.