When I sat down to the table she apologized for her cooking and said: "After the fine food you have been eating in the big hotels, you will find our table pretty common." "You're wrong, mother," I said.

"The best food I ever had I got right here at your table.

You've never lived in boarding-houses, but father has.

He knows that it's a rough life, and they don't feed you on delicacies.

Hotel cookery is not like the cookery in the Old World.