"Yes," he agreed. "It doesn't smell bad, what!"

"It smells GOOD!" said the boy. "Oh, doesn't it! Wake me up in the night
and ask me if it doesn't!"

"Poulet en casserole," said Archie.

"Golly!" said the boy, reverently.

There was a pause. The situation began to seem to Archie a trifle
difficult. He wanted to start his meal, but it began to appear that he
must either do so under the penetrating gaze of his new friend or else
eject the latter forcibly. The boy showed no signs of ever wanting to
leave the doorway.

"You've dined, I suppose, what?" said Archie.

"I never dine."

"What!"

"Not really dine, I mean. I only get vegetables and nuts and things."

"Dieting?"

"Mother is."

"I don't absolutely catch the drift, old bean," said Archie. The boy
sniffed with half-closed eyes as a wave of perfume from the poulet en
casserole floated past him. He seemed to be anxious to intercept as much
of it as possible before it got through the door.

"Mother's a food-reformer," he vouchsafed. "She lectures on it. She
makes Pop and me live on vegetables and nuts and things."

Archie was shocked. It was like listening to a tale from the abyss.

"My dear old chap, you must suffer agonies--absolute shooting pains!"
He had no hesitation now. Common humanity pointed out his course. "Would
you care to join me in a bite now?"

"Would I!" The boy smiled a wan smile. "Would I! Just stop me on the
street and ask me!"

"Come on in, then," said Archie, rightly taking this peculiar phrase
for a formal acceptance. "And close the door. The fatted calf is getting
cold."

Archie was not a man with a wide visiting-list among people with
families, and it was so long since he had seen a growing boy in action
at the table that he had forgotten what sixteen is capable of doing
with a knife and fork, when it really squares its elbows, takes a
deep breath, and gets going. The spectacle which he witnessed was
consequently at first a little unnerving. The long boy's idea of
trifling with a meal appeared to be to swallow it whole and reach out
for more. He ate like a starving Eskimo. Archie, in the time he had
spent in the trenches making the world safe for the working-man to
strike in, had occasionally been quite peckish, but he sat dazed before
this majestic hunger. This was real eating.

There was little conversation. The growing boy evidently did not believe
in table-talk when he could use his mouth for more practical purposes.