minated it so, but they were so hardened and lost to
righteousness they always repeated the offence next time the itinerant
fish-dealer called. You could not drum them into good solid,
straightforward eating.

They generally had a smuggled bit of pastry to eat in the kitchen after
dinner, for Mr. Iden considered that no one could need a second course
after first-rate mutton and forty-folds. A morsel of cheese if you
liked--nothing more. In summer the great garden abounded with fruit; he
would have nothing but rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb, day after day, or else
black-currant pudding. He held that black currants were the most
wholesome fruit that grew; if he fancied his hands were not quite clean
he would rub them with black-currant leaves to give them a pleasant
aromatic odour (as ladies use scented soap). He rubbed them with
walnut-leaves for the same purpose.

Of salad in its season he was a great eater, cucumber especially, and
lettuce and celery; but a mixed salad (oil and a flash, as it were, of
Worcester sauce) was a horror to him. A principle ran through all his
eating--an idea, a plan and design.

I assure you it is a very important matter this eating, a man's fortune
depends on his dinner. I should have been as rich as Croesus if I
could only have eaten what I liked all my time; I am sure I should, now
I come to look back.

The soundest and most wholesome food in the world was set on Mr. Iden's
table; you may differ from his system, but you would have enjoyed the
dark brown mutton, the floury potatoes, the fresh vegetables and fruit
and salad, and the Goliath ale.

When he had at last finished his meal he took his knife and carefully
scraped his crumbs together, drawing the edge along the cloth, first one
way and then the other, till he had a little heap; for, eating so much
bread, he made many crumbs. Having got them together, he proceeded to
shovel them into his mouth with the end of his knife, so that not one
was wasted. Sometimes he sprinkled a little moist sugar over them with
his finger and thumb. He then cut himself a slice of bread and cheese,
and sat down with it in his arm-chair by the fire, spreading his large
red-and-yellow silk handkerchief on his knee to catch the fragments in
lieu of a plate.

"Why can't you eat your cheese at the table, like other people?" said
Mrs. Iden, shuffling her feet with contemptuous annoyance. A deep grunt
in the throat was the answer she received; at the same time