He thanked Mr. Marsh next morning for the interest he had shown in the camp, and suggested (this was while he was buying many very solid buns for a route-march) that nothing would delight the Pelicans more than a few words from Mr. Marsh on the subject of cookery, if he could see his way to it.
“Quite so,” said Mr. Marsh, “I’m worth listenin’ to. Well! Well! I’ll be along this evening, and, maybe, I’ll bring some odds and ends with me. Send over young Sherlock-Glasse to ’elp me fetch ’em. That’s a boy with ’is stummick in the proper place. ’Know anything about ’im?”
Mr. Hale knew a good deal, but he did not tell it all. He suggested that William himself should be approached, and would excuse him from the route-march for that purpose.
“Route-march!” said Mr. Marsh in horror. “Lor! The very worst use you can make of your feet is walkin’ on ’em. ’Gives you bunions. Besides, ’e ain’t got the figure for marches. ’E’s a cook by build as well as instinck. ’Eavy in the run, oily in the skin, broad in the beam, short in the arm, but, mark you, light on the feet. That’s the way cooks ought to be issued. You never ’eard of a really good thin cook yet, did you? No. Nor me. An’ I’ve known millions that called ’emselves cooks.”
Mr. Hare regretted that he had not studied the natural history of cooks, and sent William over early in the day.
Mr. Marsh spoke to the Pelicans for an hour that evening beside an open wood fire, from the ashes of which he drew forth (talking all the while) wonderful hot cakes called “dampers”; while from its top he drew off pans full of “lobscouse,” which he said was not to be confounded with “salmagundi,” and a hair-raising compound of bacon, cheese and onions all melted together. And while the Pelicans ate, he convulsed them with mirth or held them breathless with anecdotes of the High Seas and the World, so that the vote of thanks they passed him at the end waked the cows in the Park. But William sat wrapped in visions, his hands twitching sympathetically to Mr. Marsh’s wizardry among the pots and pans. He knew now what the name of Glasse signified; for he had spent an hour at the back of the baker’s shop reading, in a brown-leather book dated 1767 A.D. and called “The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy by a Lady,” and that lady’s name, as it appeared in facsimile at the head of Chap. I, was “H. Glasse.” Torture would not have persuaded him, or Mr. Marsh, by that time, that she was not his direct ancestress; but, as a matter of form, he intended to ask his uncle.
When The Prawn, very grateful that Mr. Marsh had made no reference to his notions of cookery, asked William what he thought of the lecture and exhibition, William came out of his dreams with a start, and “Oh, all right, I suppose, but I wasn’t listening much.” Then The Prawn, who always improved an occasion, lectured him on lack of attention; and William missed all that too. The question in his mind was whether his uncle would let him stay with Mr. Marsh for a couple of days after Camp broke up, or whether he would use the reply-paid telegram, which Mr. Marsh had sent him, for his own French-polishing concerns. When The Prawn’s voice ceased, he not only promised to do better next time, but added, out of a vast and inexplicable pity that suddenly rose up inside him, “And I’m grateful to you, Prawn. I am really.”
On his return to town from that wonder-revealing visit, he found the Pelicans treating him with a new respect. For one thing, the Walrus had talked about the bacon and eggs; for another, The Prawn, who when he let himself go, could be really funny, had given some artistic imitations of Mr. Marsh’s comments on his cookery. Lastly, Mr. Hale had laid down that William’s future employ would be to cook for the Pelicans when they camped abroad. “And look out that you don’t poison us too much,” he added.
There were occasional mistakes and some very flat failures, but the Pelicans swallowed them all loyally; no one had even a stomachache, and the office of Cook’s mate to William was in great demand. The Prawn himself sought it next Spring when the Troop stole a couple of fair May days on the outskirts of a brick-field, and were very happy. But William set him aside in favour of a new and specially hopeless recruit; oily-skinned, fat, short-armed, but light on his feet, and with some notion of lifting pot-lids without wrecking or flooding the whole fire-place.
“You see, Prawn,” he explained, “cookin’ isn’t a thing one can just pick up.”