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 glorious prairies, where his other life was: the
forests, the mountains, the endless expanses; the horses, the flocks,
the slipshod ease of language and attire; and the grog-shops. Aha! There
could be no mistake about him as a gentleman and a scholar out there!
Nor would Nature shut up her pocket and demand innumerable things of
him, as civilization did. This he thought in the vengefulness of his
outraged mind.

Not only had Algernon never failed to dine every day of his life: he
had no recollection of having ever dined without drinking wine. His
conception did not embrace the idea of a dinner lacking wine. Possibly
he had some embodied understanding that wine did not fall to the lot
of every fellow upon earth: he had heard of gullets unrefreshed even by
beer: but at any rate he himself was accustomed to better things, and he
did not choose to excavate facts fro