wine, sweet cheese and oil,’ as a relish to boiled goose, he regarded as enormities, and to be counted only with the filthy potions brewed by Mrs Harlock and her like; but the cook who aspired to the term master should aim rather at the perfect sympathy of meat and seasoning, whereby each, like a loving partner, should prove its own value by emphasising the virtues of the other. To this end simplicity was the first and surest of means, combined with a perfect instinct for the hypostatic union of flavours, and for that psychologic moment reached by the revolving spit when ‘done to a turn’ was inaudibly announced from its well-basted burden. There was none could make plain roast and boiled more delectable than Phineas; as indeed Brion and his companion had good reason to know. He loved to have a hearty appetite to operate on, and would stand and expound his views to the boy, much entertaining that young gentleman, while watching his vigorous enjoyment of the good things provided for him. He liked the youngster, as indeed all associated with him came to do, at first for the master’s sake, but soon enough for his own. He was a prepossessing stripling, in truth, comely in appearance, but attractive more by reason of his gentleness and native urbanity than his looks. And at the same time he had a courageous spirit, to which Phineas loved to supply the animal fuel. There was no stint of that, at least, at the Grange. The bills of fare comprised haunch of venison, wild boar’s cheek, boiled leg of pork, salt buttock of beef (outside cut), sheep’s head (served with an electuary of unknown composition, but entertaining honey), oyster of veal, and other such goodly pièces de resistance. There was a certain ‘Karum’ pie, hoarding in its ambrosial depths treasure of beccaficoes and savoury jellies, to which Brion was mightily partial; and fish there was in plenty, turbots and soles and lobsters from the coasts, and lampreys from the rivers; while, for game, they had moorland partridges, and knots and godwits and hares. To enumerate the delicacies would be idle, though mention must be made of a peculiarly appetising broth with a boned duck floating in it, of a thoughtful hash of calves’ feet, and of a ragout of cocks’-combs with savoury balls which had to be eaten to be understood. But these were kickshaws, and, in Phineas’s philosophy, less illustrative of the culinary art than the plain joint made beautiful. His crowning achievement in their respect was a particular cream sauce, which, like the relish invented by the Marquis de Béchamel, was of that seductiveness that it could have made a mother-in-law, with all her bitterness, ‘go down.’ One might imagine that, with all this gastronomic petting, Brion would end by thinking too much of his food; but, indeed, in his healthy young mind, he regarded it only as he regarded sleep, a need of nature the better for being sound. And that was Phineas’s own view.