DORA. Well, we are prepared for anything now. What is it?
L. Cooking.
DORA. Cardinal, indeed! If only Beatrice were here with her seven handmaids, that she might see what a fine eighth we had found for her!
MARY. And the interpretation? What does "cooking" mean?
L. It means the knowledge of Medea, and of Circe, and of Calypso, and of Helen, and of Rebekah, and of the Queen of Sheba. It means the knowledge of all herbs, and fruits, and balms, and spices; and of all that is healing and sweet in fields and groves, and savory in meats, it means carefulness, and inventiveness, and watchfulness, and willingness, and readiness of appliance, it means the economy of your great-grandmothers, and the science of modern chemists; it means much tasting, and no wasting, it means English thoroughness, and French art, and Arabian hospitality, and it means, in fine, that you are to be perfectly and always "ladies"—"loaf-givers;" and, as you are to see, imperatively, that everybody has something pretty to put on,—so you are to see, yet more imperatively, that everybody has something nice to eat.
(Another pause, and long drawn breath.)
DORA (slowly recovering herself) to EGYPT. We had better have let him go to sleep, I think, after all!
L. You had better let the younger ones go to sleep now: for I haven't half done.
ISABEL (panic-struck). Oh! please, please! just one quarter of an hour.
L. No, Isabel, I cannot say what I've got to say in a quarter of an hour; and it is too hard for you, besides:—you would be lying awake, and trying to make it out, half the night. That will never do.