erisive, for, as I must repeat, it had never happened to him by any
accident before. "You are born--you dine." Such appeared to him to be the
positive regulation of affairs, and a most proper one,--of the matters of
course following the birth of a young being.

By what frightful mischance, then, does he miss his dinner? By placing
the smallest confidence in the gentlemanly feeling of another man!
Algernon deduced this reply accurately from his own experience, and
whether it can be said by other "undined" mortals, does not matter in the
least. But we have nothing to do with the constitutionally luckless: the
calamitous history of a simple empty stomach is enough. Here the tragedy
is palpable. Indeed, too sadly so, and I dare apply but a flash of the
microscope to the rageing dilemmas of this animalcule. Five and twenty
minutes had signalled their departure from the hour of seven, when
Algernon pronounced his final verdict upon Edward's conduct by leaving
the Club. He returned to it a quarter of an hour later, and lingered on
in desperate mood till eight.

He had neither watch in his pocket, nor ring on his finger, nor
disposable stud in his shirt. The sum of twenty-one pence was in his
possession, and, I ask you, as he asked himself, how is a gentleman to
dine upon that? He laughed at the notion. The irony of Providence sent
him by a cook's shop, where the mingled steam of meats and puddings
rushed out upon the wayfarer like ambushed bandits, and seized him and
dragged him in, or sent him qualmish and humbled on his way.

Two little boys had flattened their noses to the whiteness of winkles
against the jealously misty windows. Algernon knew himself to be
accounted a generous fellow, and remembering his reputation, he, as to
hint at what Fortune might do in his case, tossed some coppers to the
urchins, who ducked to the pavement and slid before the counter, in a
flash, with never a "thank ye" or the thought of it.

Algernon was incapable of appreciating this childish faith in the
beneficence of the unseen Powers who feed us, which, I must say for him,
he had shared in a very similar manner only two hours ago. He laughed
scornfully: "The little beggars!" considering in his soul that of such is
humanity composed: as many a dinnerless man has said before, and will
again, to point the speech of fools. He continued strolling on, comparing
the cramped misty London aspect of things with his visionary free dream
of the gloriou