“I never dine.”
“What!”
“Not really dine, I mean. I only get vegetables and nuts and things.”
“Dieting?”
“Mother is.”
“I don’t absolutely catch the drift, old bean,” said Archie. The boy sniffed with half-closed eyes as a wave of perfume from the poulet en casserole floated past him. He seemed to be anxious to intercept as much of it as possible before it got through the door.
“Mother’s a food-reformer,” he vouchsafed. “She lectures on it. She makes Pop and me live on vegetables and nuts and things.”
Archie was shocked. It was like listening to a tale from the abyss.
“My dear old chap, you must suffer agonies–absolute shooting pains!” He had no hesitation now. Common humanity pointed out his course. “Would you care to join me in a bite now?”
“Would I!” The boy smiled a wan smile. “Would I! Just stop me on the street and ask me!”
“Come on in, then,” said Archie, rightly taking this peculiar phrase for a formal acceptance. “And close the door. The fatted calf is getting cold.”
Archie was not a man with a wide visiting-list among people with families, and it was so long since he had seen a growing boy in action at the table that he had forgotten what sixteen is capable of doing with a knife and fork, when it really squares its elbows, takes a deep breath, and gets going. The spectacle which he witnessed was consequently at first a little unnerving. The long boy’s idea of trifling with a meal appeared to be to swallow it whole and reach out for more. He ate like a starving Eskimo. Archie, in the time he had spent in the trenches making the world safe for the working-man to strike in, had occasionally been quite peckish, but he sat dazed before this majestic hunger. This was real eating.
There was little conversation. The growing boy evidently did not believe in table-talk when he could use his mouth for more practical purposes. It was not until the final roll had been devoured to its last crumb that the guest found leisure to address his host. Then he leaned back with a contented sigh.
“Mother,” said the human python, “says you ought to chew every mouthful thirty-three times….”
“Yes, sir! Thirty-three times!” He sighed again, “I haven’t ever had meal like that.”
“All right, was it, what?”
“Was it! Was it! Call me up on the ‘phone and ask me!-Yes, sir!- Mother’s tipped off these darned waiters not to serve-me anything but vegetables and nuts and things, darn it!”
“The mater seems to have drastic ideas about the good old feed-bag, what!”
“I’ll say she has! Pop hates it as much as me, but he’s scared to kick. Mother says vegetables contain all the proteids you want. Mother says, if you eat meat, your blood-pressure goes all blooey. Do you think it does?”
“Mine seems pretty well in the pink.”
“She’s great on talking,” conceded the boy. “She’s out to-night somewhere, giving a lecture on Rational Eating to some ginks. I’ll have to be slipping up to our suite before she gets back.” He rose, sluggishly. “That isn’t a bit of roll under that napkin, is it?” he asked, anxiously.
Archie raised the napkin.
“No. Nothing of that species.”
“Oh, well!” said the boy, resignedly. “Then I believe I’ll be going. Thanks very much for the dinner.”
“Not a bit, old top. Come again if you’re ever trickling round in this direction.”
The long boy removed himself slowly, loath to leave. At the door he cast an affectionate glance back at the table.
“Some meal!” he said, devoutly. “Considerable meal!”
Archie lit a cigarette. He felt like a Boy Scout who has done his day’s Act of Kindness.
On the following morning it chanced that Archie needed a fresh supply of tobacco. It was his custom, when this happened, to repair to a small shop on Sixth Avenue which he had discovered accidentally in the course of his rambles about the great city. His relations with Jno. Blake, the proprietor, were friendly and intimate. The discovery that Mr. Blake was English and had, indeed, until a few years back maintained an establishment only a dozen doors or so from Archie’s London club, had served as a bond.