“Feed a cold and starve a fever,” says the old adage, and so I will, said I; but as I didn’t see the fun of leaving it to Miss Betsy to choose the very food that I was going to put into my mouth, I thought, that since it was a nice fine warm day, if I wrapt myself up as close as I could, and put my thick boots on with my cork socks in them, it couldn’t possibly do me any harm just toddling round to our butcher’s, to see what he had in his shop to tempt me. When I got there, I found to my great delight that he had got two of as lovely-looking little lambs’ sweetbreads as it was ever my good fortune to see; and I was just going to tell him to send them home when, as luck would have it, I turned round and caught sight of a most beautiful picture of a round of beef, all streaked with red and white like a barber’s pole; and when I thought how deliciously it would eat stewed, with plenty of vegetables chopped up, and a rich thick brown gravy--into which a glass of port wine had been poured--I was torn to pieces between the two; and went and looked first at the sweetbreads and then at the beef, for I didn’t know which I should like best, and I told the butcher’s wife that I really couldn’t tell what to do. At last she persuaded me to have the sweetbreads for dinner that day, and the round on the morrow, especially, as she very truly said, the beef would be all the better for keeping. So I had them both, and ordering three quarters of a pound of beef steak for Edward--which, with a batter pudding to follow, would do very well I thought for our dinner that evening--galloped back home, as pleased as Punch that I had stepped round to the butcher’s myself, little dreaming of what was to be the fate of my beautiful round of beef after all. The sweetbreads were _delicious!_ though that disagreeable monster of an Edward, seeing I was ill, of course tried to spoil my dinner, by declaring that his steaks were as tough and as stringy as corduroys. But I soon silenced my gentleman, by telling him that at any rate I had got a dinner for him on the morrow which was fit for the Emperor of China himself to sit down to; though I had a good bit of fun by not telling him _what_ it was; and keeping on tantalizing him till I made him guess almost all through the cookery book, for, not being overfond of stewed beef, of course he never dreamt it was that.