The lobster was an admirable dish, the rice served with it being a corrective to the exceeding richness of the liquid, and when the chairman and myself had eaten it with great relish I suggested to him that part of the pleasure it had given us was the fact that neither of us ought to have touched it at all, for the chairman had only just recovered from a second bout of influenza, and my tame doctor would have had a fit if he had known that I made a clean plate of such a rich delicacy. The dinner throughout was admirable, and I asked my host who was the _chef de cuisine_, and what was his history. The chef to the House, he told me, is M. Roux, who looks to M. Escoffier as the great master under whom he learned his art. My host had told me to ask him any questions I liked concerning the catering and the management of the kitchens and dining-rooms, and I learned that the committee consists of sixteen members drawn from every party in the House, and that it meets once a week; that the allowance made by the House for the upkeep of its dining-rooms is £2600 a year, and that the turn-over is usually about £17,000 a year, but that in 1912, being an exceptionally busy one, it rose to £25,000. I also learned that there is always first-class specialist advice ready to be called in, for no matter what subject is under discussion--be it tablecloths, or cutlery or glass--there is sure to be amongst the members of the House someone who is the highest authority on the subject, and who willingly comes to the assistance of the Kitchen Committee. When I began to ask questions about the regular House dinner and about that celebrated shilling dinner of which the outside public hear so much, the Chairman sent for the manager, a young man who has stepped from the post of assistant into the full-blown dignity of the managerial frock-coat, and asked him to show me the menus of the day and the wine list. There was a tone of pride in the manager's voice when he said that 300 dinners had been served that evening in the upstairs rooms, and he also told me the number of the guests in the downstairs rooms--186, I think he said, in all. The shilling dinner, of which about 150 are served each night, consists of fish or entrée, or joints, two vegetables, bread or plain toast, a pat of butter and Cheddar or Cheshire cheese. There is also a vegetarian dinner ready at a quarter of an hour's notice, from six till nine o'clock, which on that particular night consisted of _crème d'asperges, œufs a la tripe, carottes à la crème,_ or _haricots verts au beurre_ or _macaroni Milanaise,_ and cheese and butter. And there is a half-crown dinner of the day of four courses, vegetables and cheese and butter. Sixpence table money is charged for guests. This is the menu of the five-shilling dinner of that day, and it reads to me a very good one: