sages and mashed potatoes, twopence a plate, were the best food.
Now, sausages once or twice a week for breakfast are not unpleasant.
As lunch, even, with mashed potatoes, they become monotonous. At dinner
they are impertinent. At the end of three days Dick loathed sausages,
and, going, forth, pawned his watch to revel on sheep's head, which
is not as cheap as it looks, owing to the bones and the gravy. Then
he returned to sausages and mashed potatoes. Then he confined himself
entirely to mashed potatoes for a day, and was unhappy because of pain
in his inside. Then he pawned his waistcoat and his tie, and thought
regretfully of money thrown away in times past. There are few things
more edifying unto Art than the actual belly-pinch of hunger, and
Dick in his few walks abroad,--he did not care for exercise; it raised
desires that could not be satisfied--found himself dividing mankind into
two classes,--those who looked as if they might give him something to
eat, and those who looked otherwise. 'I never knew what I had to learn
about the human face before,' he thought; and, as a reward for his
humility, Providence caused a cab-driver at a sausage-shop where Dick
fed that night to leave half eaten a great chunk of bread. Dick took
it,--would have fought all the world for its possession,--and it cheered
him.

The month dragged through at last, and, nearly prancing with impatience,
he went to draw his money. Then he hastened to Torpenhow's address
and smelt the smell of cooking meats all along the corridors of the
chambers. Torpenhow was on the top floor, and Dick burst into his room,
to be received with a hug which nearly cracked his ribs, as Torpenhow
dragged him tot he light and spoke of twenty different things in the
same breath.

'But you're looking tucked up,' he concluded.

'Got anything to eat?' said Dick, his eye roaming round the room.

'I shall be having breakfast in a minute. What do you say to sausages?'

'No, anything but sausages! Torp, I've been starving on that accursed
horse-flesh for thirty days and thirty nights.'

'Now, what lunacy has been your latest?'

Dick spoke of the last few weeks with unbridled speech. Then he opened
his coat; there was no waistcoat below. 'I ran it fine, awfully fine,
but I've just scraped through.'

'You haven't much sense, but you've got a backbone, anyhow. Eat, and
talk afterwards.' Dick fell upon eggs and bacon and gorged till he could
gorge no more. Torpenhow hande