tch my face
when a cake had turned out as it ought. Gratified vanity at the lavish
encomiums bestowed on it, and horrified dismay at the rapidity with
which a good sized cake disappeared down the throats of the company,
warred together in the most artless fashion. The reflection would arise
that it was almost a pity it should be eaten up so very fast; yet was it
not a fine thing to be able to make such a cake! and oh, would the next
be equally good?

One lesson I leaned in my New Zealand kitchen,--and that was not to
be too hard on the point of breakages; for no one knows, unless from
personal experience, how true was the Irish cook's apology for breaking
a dish, when she said that it let go of her hand. I declare that I used,
at last, to regard my plates and dishes, cups and saucers, yea, even the
pudding basons, not as so much china and delf, but as troublesome imps,
possessed with an insane desire to dash themselves madly on the kitchen
floor upon the least provocation. Every woman knows what a slippery
thing to hold is a baby in its tub. I am in a position to pronounce that
wet plates and dishes are far more difficult to keep hold of. They have
a way of leaping out of your fingers, which must be felt to be
believed. After my first week in my kitchen I used to wonder, not at the
breakages, but at anything remaining unbroken.

My maids had a very ingenious method of disposing of the fragments of
their pottery misfortunes. At the back of the house an open patch of
ground, thickly covered with an under-growth of native grass, and the
usual large proportion of sheltering tussocks stretched away to the foot
of the nearest hill. This was burned every second year or so, and
when the fire had passed away the sight it revealed was certainly very
curious. Beneath each tussock had lain concealed a small heap of broken
china, which must have been placed there in the dead of the night. The
delinquents had evidently been at the pains to perfect their work of
destruction by reducing the china articles in question, to the smallest
imaginable fragments, for fear of a protruding corner betraying the
clever _cache_; and the contrast afforded to the blackened ground on
which they lay, by the gay patches of tiny fragments huddled together,
was droll indeed. That was the moment for recognising the remains of a
favourite jug or plate, or even a beloved tea-cup. There they were all
laid in neat little heaps, and the best of it was that the