"but what I was going to remark was, that I, as a poor parson's
wife, shall ask for some instruction in inexpensive cooking before
we separate. The dinner we have just eaten is surely only within
the reach of rich people."

"I wish some of the rich people I dine with could manage now and
then to reach a dinner as good," said the Colonel.

"I believe it is a generally received maxim, that if you want a
truth to be accepted you must repeat the same in season and out,
whenever you have the opportunity," said the Marchesa. "The
particular truth I have now in mind is the fact that Italian
cookery is the cookery of a poor nation, of people who have scant
means wherewith to purchase the very inferior materials they must
needs work with; and that they produce palatable food at all is, I
maintain, a proof that they bring high intelligence to the task.
Italian culinary methods have been developed in the struggle when
the cook, working with an allowance upon which an English cook
would resign at once, has succeeded by careful manipulation and the
study of flavouring in turning out excellent dishes made of fish
and meat confessedly inferior. Now, if we loosen the purse-strings
a little, and use the best English materials, I affirm that we
shall achieve a result excellent enough to prove that Italian
cookery is worthy to take its stand beside its great French rival.
I am glad Mrs. Wilding has given me an opportunity to impress upon
you all that its main characteristics are simplicity and cheapness,
and I can assure her that, even if she should reproduce the most
costly dishes of our course, she will not find any serious increase
in her weekly bills. When I use the word simplicity, I allude, of
course, to everyday cooking. Dishes of luxury in any school require