ulses. He, too, had yielded to the
general spirit.

Edith left them late and reluctantly. Then the professor raised his
glass. There was an unaccustomed color in his parchment-white cheeks.
His spectacles were sitting at a new angle, his black tie had wandered
from its usual precise place around to the side of his neck.

"Let us drink," he exclaimed, "to the new company! To the new Mind
Food, to the new scientific diet of the coming century! Let us drink to
ourselves, the pioneers of this wonderful discovery, the manufacturers
and owners-to-be of the new food, the first of its kind created and
designed to satisfy the moral appetite."

"We'll have a little of that in the prospectus," Mr. Horace Bunsome
remarked, taking out his notebook. "It sounds mighty good, professor."

"It sounds good because it is true, sir," Mr. Cowper asserted, a little
severely. "Your services, Mr. Bunsome, are necessary to us, but I beg
that you will not confound the enterprise in which you will presently
find yourself engaged, with any of the hazardous, will-o'-the-wisp
undertakings which spring up day by day, they tell me, in the city, and
which owe their very existence and such measure of success as they may
achieve, to the credulity of fools. Let me impress upon you, Mr.
Bunsome, that you are, on this occasion, associated with a genuine and
marvelous discovery--the scientific discovery, sir, of the age. You are
going to be one of those who will offer to the world a genuine--an
absolutely genuine tonic to the moral system."

Mr. Bunsome nodded approvingly.

"The more I hear you talk," he declared, "the more I like the sound of
it. People are tired of brain foods and nerve foods. A food for the
moral self! Professor, you're a genius."

"I am nothing of the sort, sir," the professor answered. "My share in
this is trifling. The discovery is the discovery of our friend here,"
he continued, indicating Burton. "The idea of exploiting it is the idea
of Mr. Bomford. . . . My young friend Burton, you, at least, must
rejoice with us to-night. You must rejoice, in your heart, that our
wise counsels have prevailed. You must feel that you have done a great
and a good action in sharing this inheritance of yours with millions of
your fellow-creatures."

Burton leaned a little forward in his place.

"Professor," he said, "remember that there are only two small beans,
each less than the size of a sixpence, which I have handed over to you.
As to the