The others asked for roast beef and cabbage and got it, she
supposed, though to her it only looked like dry bread and Dutch
cheese.

"I do wonder what my dreadful secret fault is," she thought, as the
Princess remarked that, as for her, she could fancy a slice of roast
peacock. "This one, she added, lifting a second mouthful of dry
bread on her fork, "is quite delicious."

"It's a game, isn't it?" asked Jimmy suddenly.

"What's a game?" asked the Princess, frowning.

"Pretending it's beef the bread and cheese, I mean."

"A game? But it is beef. Look at it," said the Princess, opening her
eyes very wide.

"Yes, of course," said Jimmy feebly. "I was only joking."

Bread and cheese is not perhaps so good as roast beef or chicken
or peacock (I'm not sure about the peacock. I never tasted peacock,
did you?); but bread and cheese is, at any rate, very much better
than nothing when you have gone on having nothing since
breakfast (gooseberries and ginger-beer hardly count) and it is long
past your proper dinner-time. Everyone ate and drank and felt
much better.

"Now," said the Princess, brushing the bread crumbs off her green
silk lap, "if you're sure you won't have any more meat you can