Doubtless Hilda would have dwelt longer upon such a dinner-party than I,
with no consolatory bone to gnaw in private, find myself inclined to do.
To me it is depressing, and a little cruel, to be compelled to betray
the inadequacy of the personal element at Alicia's banquets, especially
in connection with the conspicuous excellence of the cooking. A poverty
of cuisine would have provoked no contrast, and one irony the less would
have been offered up to the gods that season. The limitations of her
resources were, of course, arbitrary, that is plain in the fact that she
asked such a person as the Head of the Department of Education, with no
better reason than that he had laid almost the whole of Shelley under
critical notes for the benefit of Calcutta University, and the necessary
item, his wife, who did even less harm by making exquisite lampshades.
There was a civilian who had written a few years before an article in
the _Nineteenth Century_ about the aboriginal tribes of Madras, and the
lady attached to him, who had been at one time the daughter of a
Lieutenant-Governor. The Barberrys were there because Mrs. Barberry
loved meeting anybody that was clever, admired brains beyond anything;
and an Aide-de-Camp who had to be asked because Mrs.
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