er they be creative, and produce, or
slaughtering, and review; good, then, for the silly sheep of letters and
the butchers. He sat down to Mrs. Crickledon's table at half-past six.
She was, as she had previously informed him, a forty-pound-a-year cook
at the period of her courting by Crickledon. That zealous and devoted
husband had made his first excursion inland to drop over the downs to
the great house, and fetch her away as his bride, on the death of her
master, Sir Alfred Pooney, who never would have parted with her in life;
and every day of that man's life he dirtied thirteen plates at dinner,
nor more, nor less, but exactly that number, as if he believed there
was luck in it. And as Crickledon said, it was odd. But it was always a
pleasure to cook for him. Mrs. Crickledon could not abide cooking for
a mean eater. And when Crickledon said he had never seen an acorn, he
might have seen one had he looked about him in the great park, under the
oaks, on the day when he came to be married.

"Then it's a standing compliment to you, Mrs. Crickledon, that he did
not," said Herbert.

He remarked with the sententiousness of enforced philosophy, that no
wine was better than bad wine.

Mrs. Crickledon spoke of a bottle left by her summer lodgers, who
had indeed left two, calling the wine invalid's wine; and she and her
husband had opened one on the anniversary of their marriage day in
October. It had the taste of doctor's shop, they both agreed; and as
no friend of theirs could be tempted beyond a sip, they were advised,
because it was called a tonic, to mix it with the pig-wash, so that it
should not be entirely lost, but benefit the constitution of the pig.
Herbert sipped at the remaining bottle, and finding himself in the
superior society of an old Manzanilla, refilled his glass.

"Nothing I knows of proves the difference between gentlefolks and poor
persons as tastes in wine," said Mrs. Crickledon, admiring him as she
brought in a dish of cutlets,--with Sir Alfred Pooney's favourite sauce
Soubise, wherein rightly onion should be delicate as the idea of love in
maidens' thoughts, albeit constituting the element of flavour. Something
of such a dictum Sir Alfred Pooney had imparted to his cook, and
she repeated it with the fresh elegance of, such sweet sayings when
transfused through the native mind:

"He said, I like as it was what you would call a young gal's blush at a
kiss round a corner."

The epicurean baronet ha