sad smile.

"Would I! Would I! Say!..."

"I know," interrupted Archie. "Wake you up in the night and ask you! I
knew I could rely on you, old thing." He turned to Mr. Blake. "Here's
the fellow you've been wanting to meet. The finest left-and-right-hand
eater east of the Rockies! He'll fight the good fight for you."

Mr. Blake's English training had not been wholly overcome by residence
in New York. He still retained a nice eye for the distinctions of class.

"But this is young gentleman's a young gentleman," he urged, doubtfully,
yet with hope shining in his eye. "He wouldn't do it."

"Of course, he would. Don't be ridic, old thing."

"Wouldn't do what?" asked the boy.

"Why save the old homestead by taking on the champion. Dashed sad case,
between ourselves! This poor egg's nominee has given him the raspberry
at the eleventh hour, and only you can save him. And you owe it to him
to do something you know, because it was your jolly old mater's lecture
last night that made the nominee quit. You must charge in and take his
place. Sort of poetic justice, don't you know, and what not!" He turned
to Mr. Blake. "When is the conflict supposed to start? Two-thirty? You
haven't any important engagement for two-thirty, have you?"

"No. Mother's lunching at some ladies' club, and giving a lecture
afterwards. I can slip away."

Archie patted his head.

"Then leg it where glory waits you, old bean!"

The long boy was gazing earnestly at the poster. It seemed to fascinate
him.

"Pie!" he said in a hushed voice.

The word was like a battle-cry.

CHAPTER XXII. WASHY STEPS INTO THE HALL OF FAME

At about nine o'clock next morning, in a suite at the Hotel Cosmopolis,
Mrs. Cora Bates McCall, the eminent lecturer on Rational Eating, was
seated at breakfast with her family. Before her sat Mr. McCall, a
little hunted-looking man, the natural peculiarities of whose face were
accentuated by a pair of glasses of semicircular shape, like half-moons
with the horns turned up. Behind these, Mr. McCall's eyes played a
perpetual game of peekaboo, now peering over them, anon ducking down and
hiding behind them. He was sipping a cup of anti-caffeine. On his right,
toying listlessly with a plateful of cereal, sat his son, Washington.
Mrs. McCall herself was eating a slice of Health Bread and nut butter.
For she practised as well as preached the doctrines which she had
striven for so many years to inculcate in an unthinking popu