George Emerson was troubled about Aline Peters.  Watching over her, as he did, with a lover’s eye, he had perceived that about her which distressed him.  On the terrace that morning she had been abrupt to him—­what in a girl of less angelic disposition one might have called snappy.  Yes, to be just, she had snapped at him.  That meant something.  It meant that Aline was not well.  It meant what her pallor and tired eyes meant—­that the life she was leading was doing her no good.

Eleven nights had George dined at Blandings Castle, and on each of the eleven nights he had been distressed to see the manner in which Aline, declining the baked meats, had restricted herself to the miserable vegetable messes which were all that doctor’s orders permitted to her suffering father.  George’s pity had its limits.  His heart did not bleed for Mr. Peters.  Mr. Peters’ diet was his own affair.  But that Aline should starve herself in this fashion, purely by way of moral support for her parent, was another matter.

George was perhaps a shade material.  Himself a robust young man and taking what might be called an outsize in meals, he attached perhaps too much importance to food as an adjunct to the perfect life.  In his survey of Aline he took a line through his own requirements; and believing that eleven such dinners as he had seen Aline partake of would have killed him he decided that his loved one was on the point of starvation.

No human being, he held, could exist on such Barmecide feasts.  That Mr. Peters continued to do so did not occur to him as a flaw in his reasoning.  He looked on Mr. Peters as a sort of machine.  Successful business men often give that impression to the young.  If George had been told that Mr. Peters went along on gasoline, like an automobile, he would not have been much surprised.  But that Aline—­his Aline—­should have to deny herself the exercise of that mastication of rich meats which, together with the gift of speech, raises man above the beasts of the field——­ That was what tortured George.

He had devoted the day to thinking out a solution of the problem.  Such was the overflowing goodness of Aline’s heart that not even he could persuade her to withdraw her moral support from her father and devote herself to keeping up her strength as she should do.  It was necessary to think of some other plan.

And then a speech of hers had come back to him.  She had said—­poor child: 

“I do get a little hungry sometimes—­late at night generally.”

The problem was solved.  Food should be brought to her late at night.

On the table by his bed was a stout sheet of packing paper.  On this lay, like one of those pictures in still life that one sees on suburban parlor walls, a tongue, some bread, a knife, a fork, salt, a corkscrew and a small bottle of white wine.