“It is a recipe of my grandmother’s, your honor, and I am not going to give it until you taste what the bird is like. Now, if you will go away I will get it ready for you.”
Mr. Leeson really felt interested.
“What a sensible woman!” he said to himself. “I shall try and get that recipe out of her for threepence; it will be valuable for my little book of cheap recipes; it would probably sell the book. How to make four dinners, four lunches, and four plates of soup out of an old hen. A most taking recipe—most taking!”
He walked up and down while the pretended gipsy heated up the stew she had already made out of a really tender chicken. The poor old hen was tied up so that she could not cackle or make any sound, and put into the bottom of the supposed gipsy’s basket; and presently Jasper appeared carrying the stew in a cracked basin.
“Here, your honor, eat it up before me, and tell me afterwards if a better or a more tender fowl ever existed.”
It was in this way that Mr. Leeson made an excellent repast. He was highly pleased, for decidedly the boniest and most scraggy of the fowls had been selected, and nothing could be more delicious than this stew. He fetched a plate and knife and fork from his sitting-room, where he always kept a certain amount of useful kitchen utensils, ate his dinner, pronounced it to be the best of the best, and desired the gipsy to leave the balance in the porch.
“Thank you,” he said; “it is admirable. And so you really made that out of my old hen in a few minutes? I will give you threepence if you will give me the recipe.”
“I could not sell it for threepence, sir—no, not for sixpence; no, not for a shilling. But I should like to make a bargain for the rest of the fowls.”
“How much will you give for each?”
“Taking them all in a heap, I will give sixpence apiece,” replied the gipsy.