But other things have disappeared from Great Britain since war began, and Henry was doomed to walk the island vainly looking for the famed foods of old England. All through Italy and France, where onion soup and various pastes were served to us, Henry ate them, but in a fond hope that when we got to England he would have some of the "superior comestibles" which a true lover of Dickens had a right to expect. The French were given to ragouts and Latin translations of Mulligan stews, and braised veal smothered in onions and carrots and a lot of staple and fancy green groceries, and these messed dishes irritated Henry. He is the kind of an old-fashioned man who likes to take his food straight. If he eats onions, he demands that they shall be called onions, or if they serve him carrots, he must know specifically that he is eating carrots, and he wants his potatoes, mashed, baked, boiled, or fried and no nonsense about it. Similarly he wants his veal served by itself, and when they bring him a smoking brown casserole of browned vegetables, browned gravy and browned meat, he pokes his fork into it, sniffs, "another cat mess," pushes it aside and asks for eatable food! So all over the continent he was bragging about what he was going to do to "the roast beef of old England," and was getting ready for Yorkshire pudding with it. It was sweet to hear Henry's honest bark at spaghetti and fish-salads, bay deep-mouthed welcome to Sam Weller's "'am and weal pie," and even Pickwick's "chops and tomato sauce," and David Copperfield's toasted muffins, as we drew near the chalk cliffs of England. Also he was going to find what an "eel pie" was, and he had a dozen Dickensonian dishes that he proposed to explore, dishes whose very names would make a wooden Indian's mouth water. But when he got there the cupboard was bare. England was going on rations. Fats were scarce, sugars were rare, starches were controlled by the food board. And who could make a currant tart without these? He dropped two bullet-sized brown biscuits with a hazelnut of butter under his vest the first three minutes of our first breakfast and asked for another round, after he had taken mine. [Illustration: And we felt like prize boobs suddenly kidnapped from a tacky party and dropped into a grand ball] "That's your allowance, sir," said the waitress, and money would buy no more.