nd looked extremely neat and tremendously new and clean, so
much so, indeed, that several persons glanced at him a little admiringly
as he was met half way to the corner table by his friends.

"Hello, old chap! Glad to see you. What sort of a voyage? How did you
leave the royal family? Glad to get back?"

They all greeted him at once, shaking hands and slapping him on the
back, as they hustled him gleefully back to the corner table and made
him sit down.

"Say, garsong," said Nick Baumgarten to their favourite waiter, who came
at once in answer to his summons, "let's have a porterhouse steak, half
the size of this table, and with plenty of mushrooms and potatoes hashed
brown. Here's Mr. Selden just returned from visiting at Windsor Castle,
and if we don't treat him well, he'll look down on us."

G. Selden grinned. "How have you been getting on, Sam?" he said, nodding
cheerfully to the man. They were old and tried friends. Sam knew all
about the days when a fellow could not come into Shandy's at all, or
must satisfy his strong young hunger with a bowl of soup, or coffee and
a roll. Sam did his best for them in the matter of the size of portions,
and they did their good-natured utmost for him in the affair of the
pooled tip.

"Been getting on as well as can be expected," Sam grinned back. "Hope
you had a fine time, Mr. Selden?"

"Fine! I should smile! Fine wasn't in it," answered Selden. "But I'm
looking forward to a Shandy porterhouse steak, all the same."

"Did they give you a better one in the Strawnd?" asked Baumgarten, in
what he believed to be a correct Cockney accent.

"You bet they didn't," said Selden. "Shandy's takes a lot of beating."
That last is English.

The people at the other tables cast involuntary glances at them. Their
eager, hearty young pleasure in the festivity of the occasion was a
healthy thing to see. As they sat round the corner table, they produced
the effect of gathering close about G. Selden. They concentrated their
combined attention upon him, Belter and Johnson leaning forward on their
folded arms, to watch him as he talked.

"Billy Page came back in August, looking pretty bum," Nick Baumgarten
began. "He'd been painting gay Paree brick red, and he'd spent more
money than he'd meant to, and that wasn't half enough. Landed dead
broke. He said he'd had a great time, but he'd come home with rather a
dark brown taste in his mouth, that he'd like to get rid of."

"He thought you were