‘Why no prayers?’

’I don’t know.  I suppose they had to get up early on washing-days, and so they wanted to go to sleep soon.’

’I’m afraid, dear, you do the same without as good an excuse.  Read another!’

’He goes to dine with some one—­his uncle, I think.  He says, “An excellent dinner, but the venison pasty was palpable beef, which was not handsome."’

’How beautiful!  Mrs. Hunt Mortimer’s sole last week was palpable plaice.  Mr. Pepys is right.  It was not handsome.’

’Here’s another grand entry:  “Talked with my wife of the poorness and meanness of all that the people about us do, compared with what we do.”  I dare say he was right, for they did things very well.  When he dined out, he says that his host gave him “the meanest dinner of beef, shoulder and umbles of venison, and a few pigeons, and all in the meanest manner that ever I did see, to the basest degree.”

‘What are umbles, dear?’

‘I have no idea.’

’Well, whatever they are, it sounds to me a very good dinner.  People must have lived very well in those days.’

’They habitually over-ate and over-drank themselves.  But Pepys gives us the menu of one of his own entertainments.  I’ve marked it somewhere.  Yes, here it is.  “Fricassee of rabbits and chickens, a leg of mutton boiled, three carps in a dish, a great dish of a side of lamb, a dish of roasted pigeons, a dish of four lobsters, three tarts, a lamprey pie (a most rare pie!), a dish of anchovies, good wine of several sorts, and all things mighty noble and to my great content."’

‘Good gracious!  I told you that I associated him with indigestion.’

‘He did them pretty well that time.’

‘Who cooked all this?’

‘The wife helped in those days.’

’No wonder she died at twenty-nine.  Poor dear!  What a splendid kitchen-range they must have had!  I never understood before why they had such enormous grates in the old days.  Naturally, if you have six pigeons, and a lamprey, and a lobster, and a side of lamb, and a leg of mutton, and all these other things cooking at the same time, you would need a huge fire.’

‘The wonderful thing about Pepys,’ said Frank, looking thoughtfully over the pages, ’is that he is capable of noting down the mean little impulses of human nature, which most men would be so ashamed of, that they would hasten to put them out of their mind.  His occasional shabbiness in money matters, his jealousies, his envies, all his petty faults, which are despicable on account of their pettiness.  Fancy any man writing this.  He is describing how he visited a friend and was reading a book from his library.  “A very good book,” says he, “especially one letter of advice to a courtier, most true and good, which made me once resolve to tear out the two leaves that it was writ in, but I forbore it.”  Imagine recording such a vile thought.’