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 proteins 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.

To-day he found Mr. Blake in a depressed mood.  The tobacconist was a hearty, red-faced man, who looked like an English sporting publican —­the kind of man who wears a fawn-coloured top-coat and drives to the Derby in a dog-cart; and usually there seemed to be nothing on his mind except the vagaries of the weather, concerning which he was a great conversationalist.  But now moodiness had claimed him for its own.  After a short and melancholy “Good morning,” he turned to the task of measuring out the tobacco in silence.