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"One may as well say, straight out," said the Admiral quietly, after glancing at his daughter who was deep in the kind of middle-aged flirtation that Sir Robert enjoyed, "that if any of them fall in love with a man on the spot, one won't feel able to blame them. My Jane is a good girl and it's going to be far more difficult for the good girls than the easy-going ones. But no good looking for trouble. Your Polish girl is a wonderful cook."

"She would probably run a knife into you for that," said Lady Fielding. "She's a Mixo-Lydian."

The Admiral began to laugh.

"I met the Admiral of the Mixo-Lydian fleet once," he said. "The fleet is an old Margate paddle-steamer that patrols the River Patsch where it forms the eastern boundary of Mixo-Lydia. She came round by the Mediterranean and up the Danube under her own power, I believe, about 1856 when Mixo-Lydia broke away from Slavo-Lydia. He was a smuggler and gave me some very good brandy."

A good deal of noise now stopped their talk. The noise was Robin and Anne taking away the pilaf with its accompaniments and bringing in the sour-milk pudding, Gradka's masterpiece. A piece of exquisitely flaky pastry, about the size and shape of a huge omelette lay on a large china dish. It was encrusted with some kind of delicious nutty-sugary confection, and when cut was found to contain a species of ambrosial cheese-cake. With it was served a bowl of hot sauce of which we can only say that if everyone will think of the supreme sweet sauce and add to it an unknown and ravishing flavour, it will but feebly explain its silken ecstasy. Conversation was stilled while sheer greed took its place.