Mr. Blake relapsed into a tortured silence.

“But what’s the matter with the blighter?  Why can’t he go over the top?  Has he got indigestion?”

“Indigestion?” Mr. Blaife laughed another of his hollow laughs.  “You couldn’t give that boy indigestion if you fed ’im in on safety-razor blades.  Religion’s more like what ’e’s got.”

“Religion?”

“Well, you can call it that.  Seems last night, instead of goin’ and resting ’is mind at a picture-palace like I told him to, ’e sneaked off to some sort of a lecture down on Eighth Avenue.  ’E said ’e’d seen a piece about it in the papers, and it was about Rational Eating, and that kind of attracted ’im.  ’E sort of thought ’e might pick up a few hints, like.  ’E didn’t know what rational eating was, but it sounded to ’im as if it must be something to do with food, and ’e didn’t want to miss it.  ’E came in here just now,” said Mr. Blake, dully, “and ’e was a changed lad!  Scared to death ’e was!  Said the way ‘e’d been goin’ on in the past, it was a wonder ’e’d got any stummick left!  It was a lady that give the lecture, and this boy said it was amazing what she told ’em about blood-pressure and things ’e didn’t even know ’e ’ad.  She showed ’em pictures, coloured pictures, of what ’appens inside the injudicious eater’s stummick who doesn’t chew his food, and it was like a battlefield!  ’E said ’e would no more think of eatin’ a lot of pie than ‘e would of shootin’ ’imself, and anyhow eating pie would be a quicker death.  I reasoned with ’im, Mr. Moffam, with tears in my eyes.  I asked ’im was he goin’ to chuck away fame and wealth just because a woman who didn’t know what she was talking about had shown him a lot of faked pictures.  But there wasn’t any doin’ anything with him.  ’E give me the knock and ’opped it down the street to buy nuts.”  Mr. Blake moaned.  “Two ’undred dollars and more gone pop, not to talk of the fifty dollars ’e would have won and me to get twenty-five of!”

Archie took his tobacco and walked pensively back to the hotel.  He was fond of Jno.  Blake, and grieved for the trouble that had come upon him.  It was odd, he felt, how things seemed to link themselves up together.  The woman who had delivered the fateful lecture to injudicious eaters could not be other than the mother of his young guest of last night.  An uncomfortable woman!  Not content with starving her own family—­Archie stopped in his tracks.  A pedestrian, walking behind him, charged into his back, but Archie paid no attention.  He had had one of those sudden, luminous ideas, which help a man who does not do much thinking as a rule to restore his average.  He stood there for a moment, almost dizzy at the brilliance of his thoughts; then hurried on.  Napoleon, he mused as he walked, must have felt rather like this after thinking up a hot one to spring on the enemy.

As if Destiny were suiting her plans to his, one of the first persons he saw as he entered the lobby of the Cosmopolis was the long boy.  He was standing at the bookstall, reading as much of a morning paper as could be read free under the vigilant eyes of the presiding girl.  Both he and she were observing the unwritten rules which govern these affairs—­to wit, that you may read without interference as much as can be read without touching the paper.  If you touch the paper, you lose, and have to buy.