He waved the soup aside impatiently. “I never touch soup,” he said, “it interferes with my digestion.” It was the same with the roast beef. But the Yorkshire pudding saved me. “I can eat the fat of the beef,” he said condescendingly—“spread on the pudding, it is highly digestible.”
“Rich,” I thought, “much too rich for the ordinary stomach.” But I resigned it to him willingly, yes, all of it—and it was a remarkably fat sirloin—if only because my own inclination did not lie that way. So we got on well for the first day.
But I still had something to learn. I had no idea that “cereals” comprehended the be-all and end-all of his dietary. So I thought to tempt him with what was really a very delicate menu.
A clear soup, red mullet, ptarmigan, with a savoury to follow, was the not un-appetising fare I set before him.
The soup he declined as before, with the air of one who refuses to re-open a question.
When the mullet followed I felt sure of his approval. Not the veriest epicure could have resisted the tempting aroma and the sight of the nut-brown envelopes which enshrouded the “woodcock of the sea.” But no. “This fish has not been cleaned,” was the objection; “how careless of your cook.”
Of course this criticism put him outside the pale. A man who would clean a red mullet would reject the soft roe of a herring or (on occasion) murder his mother-in-law.
“The fact is,” he repeated—this time a little angrily—“I can’t dine without cereals.”
My heart sank within me but I said with assumed confidence, “The cereals will follow later on. You see we outsiders like something a little more solid to begin with.” But my bravery was all on the surface. For how was he to sustain nature on one small savoury, even if he sampled the whole of it? If only I had ordered Peggy to supply the ample rice pudding or elegant dumplings of nursery tradition! But it was too late now, for the ptarmigan was already on the table.
“What, no greens?” he said, “broccoli, or beans, or at any rate cabbage?”