“You silly Juggins! It's meant to taste of soda—it's a soda cake.”
“I know that. It isn't meant to taste of nothing but soda. There wants to be some cake about it also. This thing, so far as flavour is concerned, is nothing but a Seidlitz powder. You can't give people solidified Seidlitz powders for tea!”
Dan would fume, but I would remain firm. The soda cake would be laid aside, and something else attempted. His cookery was the one thing Dan was obstinate about. He would never admit that anything could possibly be wrong with it. His most ghastly failures he would devour himself later on with pretended enjoyment. I have known him finish a sponge cake, the centre of which had to be eaten with a teaspoon, declaring it was delicious; that eating a dry sponge cake was like eating dust; that a sponge cake ought to be a trifle syrupy towards the centre. Afterwards he would be strangely silent and drink brandy out of a wine-glass.
“Call these knives clean?” It would be Dan's turn.
“Yes, I do.”
Dan would draw his finger across one, producing chiaro-oscuro.
“Not if you go fingering them. Why don't you leave them alone and go on with your own work?”
“You've just wiped them, that's all.”
“Well, there isn't any knife-powder.”
“Yes, there is.”