At last, when he realized that the activities of the table were decreasing, he put down his paper.  “Is it all right?” he asked.  “Is the coffee hot?”

“I ain’t never ’ad a meal like that, y’r gryce, not never any time,” the boy answered, with a new sort of fire in his eyes.

“Was there enough?”

“I’ve left some,” answered his guest, looking at the jar of marmalade and half a slice of toast.  “I likes the coffee hot—­tykes y’r longer to drink it,” he added.

Ian Stafford chuckled.  He was getting more than the worth of his money.  He had nibbled at his own breakfast, with the perturbations of a crossing from Flushing still in his system, and its equilibrium not fully restored; and yet, with the waste of his own meal and the neglect of his own appetite, he had given a great and happy half-hour to a waif of humanity.

As he looked at the boy he wondered how many thousands there were like him within rifle-shot from where he sat, and he thought each of them would thank whatever gods they knew for such a neglected meal.  The words from the scare-column of the paper he held smote his sight: 

“War Inevitable—­Transvaal Bristling with Guns and Loaded to the Nozzle with War Stores—­Milner and Kruger No Nearer a Settlement—­ Sullen and Contemptuous Treatment of British Outlander.” . . .  And so on.

And if war came, if England must do this ugly thing, fulfil her bitter and terrible task, then what about such as this young outlander here, this outcast from home and goodly toil and civilized conditions, this sickly froth of the muddy and dolorous stream of lower England?  So much withdrawn from the sources of the possible relief, so much less with which to deal with their miseries—­perhaps hundreds of millions, mopped up by the parched and unproductive soil of battle and disease and loss.

He glanced at the paper again.  “Britons Hold Your Own,” was the heading of the chief article.  “Yes, we must hold our own,” he said, aloud, with a sigh.  “If it comes, we must see it through; but the breakfasts will be fewer.  It works down one way or another—­it all works down to this poor little devil and his kind.”

“Now, what’s your name?” he asked.

“Jigger,” was the reply.

“What else?”

“Nothin’, y’r gryce.”

“Jigger—­what?”

“It’s the only nyme I got,” was the reply.

“What’s your father’s or your mother’s name?”

“I ain’t got none.  I only got a sister.”

“What’s her name?”

“Lou,” he answered.”  That’s her real name.  But she got a fancy name yistiddy.  She was took on at the opera yistiddy, to sing with a hunderd uvver girls on the styge.  She’s Lulu Luckingham now.”

“Oh—­Luckingham!” said Stafford, with a smile, for this was a name of his own family, and of much account in circles he frequented.  “And who gave her that name?  Who were her godfathers and godmothers?”