“Depend upon it,” said Wright, with conviction, the battles of Old England were never fought, nor its empire built, on carrots and cold water. Look at your Frenchman.”
“I’ve known some very charming French-women,” protested Edward.
“We spent a month in Paris last autumn,” said the Archdeacon, “and I hadn’t a decent meal all the time I was there.”
“Oh! Papa!” protested Eleanor. “The cooking is exquisite.”
“A woman doesn’t understand cooking,” declared her father. “It is well known that if the matter had been left to Eve, we should never have progressed beyond tea and bread and butter.”
“At any rate, Eve invented costumes,” suggested Edward. “The Palais-Royal was founded in Eden.”
“Don’t speak disrespectfully of Eden,” said the Archdeacon.
“I don’t. ’tis there we meet the first lawyer.”
“You mean the serpent.”
“Teste Coleridge,” said Beaumont. “You remember the lines, Miss St. Clair?—