ed St. George with a smile--"nor
could he into mine, although he is half our weight; and as for our
hats--they wouldn't get further down on his head than the top of his
crown."

"But I insist on the experiment," bubbled Clayton good-naturedly.
"Here we are, hungry as wolves and everything being burned up. Try the
suit-of-clothes trick--Kennedy did it--and it won't take your Todd ten
minutes to go to Guy's and bring him back inside of them."

"Those days are over for Poe," Kennedy remarked with a slight frown. The
major's continued allusions to a brother writer's poverty, though pure
badinage, had begun to jar on the author.

For the second time Todd's face was thrust in at the door. It now looked
like a martyr's being slowly roasted at the stake.

"Yes, Todd--serve dinner!" called St. George in a tone that showed how
great was his disappointment. "We won't wait any longer, gentlemen.
Geniuses must be allowed some leeway. Something has detained our guest."

"He's got an idea in his head and has stopped in somewhere to write it
down," continued Clayton in his habitual good-natured tone: it was the
overdone woodcock--(he had heard Todd's warning)--that still filled his
mind.

"I could forgive him for that," exclaimed the judge--"some of his best
work, I hear, has been done on the spur of the moment--and you should
forgive him too, Clayton--unbeliever and iconoclast as you are--and you
WOULD forgive him if you knew as much about new poetry as you do about
old port."

Clayton's stout body shook with laughter. "My dear Pancoast," he cried,
"you do not know what you are talking about. No man living or dead
should be forgiven who keeps a woodcock on the spit five minutes over
time. Forgive him! Why, my dear sir, your poet ought to be drawn and
quartered, and what is left of him boiled in oil. Where shall I sit, St.
George?"

"Alongside of Latrobe. Kennedy, I shall put you next to Poe's vacant
chair--he knows and loves you best. Seymour, will you and Richard
take your places alongside of Pancoast, and Harry, will you please sit
opposite Mr. Kennedy?"

And so the dinner began.

CHAPTER XV

Whether it was St. George's cheery announcement: "Well, gentlemen, I am
sorry, but we still have each other, and so we will remember our guest
in our hearts even if we cannot have his charming person," or whether
it was that the absence of Poe made little difference when a dinner with
St. George was in question--certain