I did enjoy the long menu very much indeed, and rather pitied the General and his plain fare. When we had finished, he rose up and uttered a sigh. "And now for Lucy," he said. I began to feel rather alarmed about Miss MacNeill. However, there was always the General to befriend me, so I plucked up heart of grace. When we reached Bloomsbury Square, the houses of which seemed to me very high and gloomy, the door was opened to us by a pretty little maid, who beamed all over at seeing the General. "Well, Phyllis," said he, "how are you, and how's your mistress?" "Quite well, thank you, sir. The mistress has only just come in. She will be with you in a minute, sir." "Just take this young lady upstairs to get her hat off, and make her very comfortable, Phyllis. Mind, very comfortable, like a good girl." "That I shall, sir," said Phyllis with a pretty smile. I found my bedroom very dainty, and what amazed me in London, it looked into a great chestnut tree, of which the leaves were all a warm lovely gold. "Why, how comfortable I shall be, Phyllis!" said I. "It all looks so nice." "Yes, don't it, Miss?" said Phyllis. "'Tis a very comfortable 'ouse, only for the eating, which it is awful." I noticed that Phyllis pronounced her "h's" very curiously, but I shall not attempt to reproduce her pronunciation. "The mistress she's vegetarian, Miss, and expecs everyone to fill 'emselves with what I calls garbage. An' as for beer, you wouldn't get a drop, not if it was ever so. But cook, she's recommended by the Vegetarian League, an' supposed to be strict. She 'as a joint sent in reg'lar by the greengrocer, an' put down for artichokes an' such like. So we gets our bit. There, poor girls has to take care of theirselves"--and, with a defiant little flounce of her head, as if she rebutted my imaginary objections, pretty Phyllis marched out of the room. I found Miss MacNeill a very brisk old lady, with bright eyes and rosy cheeks and white teeth, quite like what the General would have been if he had lived at home in peace and a temperate climate. She had been to a meeting of the Anti-Animal Food Society, and was very full of the subject. She told some very dreadful stories, and had a way of flinging them at the General's head as if he were a monster of cruelty, though, I am sure, poor dear, he loves the animals as much as anyone could, and the greeting between him and his sister's asthmatic pug and waddling poodle had been very pleasant to witness. He bore his sister's stories wonderfully for a while, I suppose because he was conscious of his own deceit about the dinner. At last he got testy. "Drop it, Lucy!" he cried; "can't you see you're making this child quite pale? It isn't a subject for dinner anyhow." "Yet, Hugh," said Miss Lucy with a little spark of battle coming into her eye, "I've seen you sitting down to a meal of bleeding flesh which didn't seem to repel you the least bit in the world."