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Cover the bottom and sides of a deep dish with one sheet of it, and put in your meat, having seasoned it with pepper, salt, nutmeg, and mace. Pour in the gravy which you have prepared from the trimmings, and two glasses of port or claret, and lay on the top some hits of butter rolled in flour.
It was a pleasant change from silence to speech, from Chinese discomfort to European civilisation. Chinese fare one evening, pork, rice, tea, and beans; and the next, chicken and the famed Shuenwei ham, mutton and green peas and red currant jelly, pancakes and aboriginal Yunnan cheese, claret, champagne, port, and cordial Medoc.
After finishing his plate he had less the look of a ship driving on to reef some of his images of the country. He called for claret and water, sighing as he munched bread in vast portions, evidently conceiving that to eat unbuttered bread was to abstain from luxury. He praised passingly the quality of the bread. It came from Steynham, and so did the, milk and cream, the butter, chicken and eggs.
I settled him at once, however, by saying that a claret cask would do; there having been a joke current of his coming to see how the gunroom was getting on about luncheon time, at the time our wine cellar had been so sumptuously replenished by Larkyns, who, by the way, got his step to acting mate the same month that I was made midshipman.
A bird-man might have flown over the neighborhood a dozen times without guessing that they were there. We were hidden in the pines, and only an occasional far-off Br-r-rum-m! from the cannons in the south broke the stillness. Some one had brought up a cask of native claret from Chanak, and the field-marshal's staff were helping to put it into the bank in front of the arbor.
He had had only moderate aid from Willett in disposing of two bottles of sound old claret, and one was enough to set the garrulous tongue to wagging. He would not cease at sight of Harris, standing silent and respectful before him. Stannard had to interpose and say, "You sent for 'Tonio, sir, as I happened to hear," as indeed they all did, far and near, whereat the veteran turned.
When the first bottle of claret was opened some embarrassment was caused by the fact that there was only one drinking cup, but this was passed from one to another, after being wiped. Cornudet alone, doubtless in a spirit of gallantry, raised to his own lips that part of the rim which was still moist from those of his fair neighbor.
Our seance at the mess that night was a late one, for after we had discussed some coopers of claret, there was a very general public feeling in favour of a broiled bone and some devilled kidneys, followed by a very ample bowl of bishop, over which simple condiments we talked "green room" till near the break of day.
These two young gentlemen spoke freely about the inferiority of many things "on this side" as they denominated this glorious Land of Freedom of many things from horses to wine. The country was rapidly becoming, they agreed, no place for a gentleman to live. Eddie Arledge confessed that, from motives of economy, he had been beguiled into purchasing an American claret.
Some years ago, various shades of green, brown, and claret colour were worn, but they seem to have been superseded by dark grey and dark blue, at least in the Shires, though since the death of our lamented Queen Victoria, black has been greatly used.
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