your hat; pray draw up a chair. Maggie will have a place laid
for you in a minute."

"Oh, I assure you--I couldn't think of it--I've just eaten
my--my--dinner," expostulated Theron. He murmured more inarticulate
remonstrances a moment later, when the grim old domestic appeared with
plates, serviette, and tableware for his use, but she went on spreading
them before him as if she heard nothing. Thus committed against a decent
show of resistance, the young minister did eat a little here and there
of what was set before him, and was human enough to regret frankly
that he could not eat more. It seemed to him very remarkable cookery,
transfiguring so simple a thing as a steak, for example, quite out of
recognition, and investing the humble potato with a charm he had never
dreamed of. He wondered from time to time if it would be polite to ask
how the potatoes were cooked, so that he might tell Alice.

The conversation at the table was not continuous, or even enlivened.
After the lapses into silence became marked, Theron began to suspect
that his refusal to drink wine had annoyed them--the more so as he had
drenched a large section of table-cloth in his efforts to manipulate a
siphon instead. He was greatly relieved, therefore, when Father Forbes
explained in an incidental way that Dr. Ledsmar and he customarily ate
their meals almost without a word.

"It's a philosophic fad of his," the priest went on smilingly, "and I
have fallen in with it for the sake of a quiet life; so that when we do
have company--that is to say, once in a blue moon--we display no manners
to speak of."

"I had always supposed--that is, I've always heard--that it was more
healthful to talk at meals," said Theron. "Of course--what I mean--I
took it for granted all physicians thought so."

Dr. Ledsmar laughed. "That depends so much upon the quality of the
meals!" he remarked, holding his glass up to the light.

He seemed a man of middle age and an equable disposition. Theron,
stealing stray glances at him around the lampshade, saw most distinctly
of all a broad, impressive dome of skull, which, though obviously the
result of baldness, gave the effect of quite belonging to the face.
There were gold-rimmed spectacles, through which shone now and again the
vivid sparkle of sharp, alert eyes, and there was a nose of some sort
not easy to classify, at once long and thick. The rest was thin hair and
short round beard, mouse-colored where the light caught th