The other men had arrived now and the three of us were ranged around Peter in a circle, wondering with wide-opened eyes at his tone of voice, his dismal expression, and especially at the air of dejection which seemed to ooze through every square inch of his calico dressing-gown.

“Sit down, all of you,” he continued “and listen.  And it’s all your fault.  If only one of you had come up to see me!  I waited and waited; I knew most of you would be off somewhere eating your Thanksgiving turkey, but that every mother’s son of you should have forgotten me—­that’s what I won’t forgive you for.”

We, with one accord, began to make excuses, but he waved us into silence.

“After a while I got so lonely I couldn’t stand it any longer.  So about six o’clock I started out to dine alone somewhere—­some place where I had no associations with any one of you.  I hadn’t gone as far as Broadway when along came two men and a woman.  You’d have said ’two gentlemen and a lady’—­I say two men and a woman.  I looked at them and they looked at me.  I saw they were from out of town, and right away came the thought, they must be lonely, too.  Everybody is lonesome on Thanksgiving if he’s away from home, or, like me, has no place to go to.  The Large Man stopped and nudged the Small Man, and the Woman turned and looked at me earnestly, then all three talked together for a minute, then I heard the Small Man say, ‘I’ll go you a ten on it,’ which conveyed no meaning to me.  Then all three of them walked back to where I stood and the Large Man asked me where Foscari’s restaurant was.

“Well, of course, that was in the next street, so I volunteered to show them the place.  On the way over the Small Man and the Woman lagged behind and I overheard them say that it would never do—­that is, the Woman said so; at which the Small Man laughed and said they couldn’t find a better.  All this time the Large Man held me by the arm in a friendly sort of way, as if he were afraid I would stub my toe and fall if he didn’t help me over the gutters; telling me all the time that he didn’t know the ropes around New York and how much obliged he was to me for taking all this trouble to show him.  Pretty soon we arrived at Foscari’s.  I never dined there—­never had been inside the place.  Cheap sort of a restaurant—­down two steps from the sidewalk, but they asked for Foscari’s, and that’s where I took them.

“‘Here’s the place,’ I said, and I lifted my hat to the Woman and turned to go back.

“‘No, don’t go,’ said the Large Man, still holding on to my arm.  ’You’ve been white and decent to us; we’re all stranded here.  This is Thanksgiving—­ come in and have dinner with us.’