know perfectly well how fatal it is to get angry at meals. It was
eating while he was in a bad temper that ruined father's
digestion. George, that nice, fat carver is wheeling his truck
this way. Flag him and make him give me some more of that
mutton."

George looked round him morosely.

"This," he said, "is England--this restaurant, I mean. You don't
need to go any farther. Just take a good look at this place and
you have seen the whole country and can go home again. You may
judge a country by its meals. A people with imagination will eat
with imagination. Look at the French; look at ourselves, The
Englishman loathes imagination. He goes to a place like this and
says: 'Don't bother me to think. Here's half a dollar. Give me
food--any sort of food--until I tell you to stop.' And that's the
principle on which he lives his life. 'Give me anything, and
don't bother me!' That's his motto."

"If that was meant to apply to Freddie and me, I think you're
very rude. Do you mean that any girl would have done for him, so
long as it was a girl?"

George Emerson showed a trace of confusion. Being honest with
himself, he had to admit that he did not exactly know what he did
mean--if he meant anything. That, he felt rather bitterly, was
the worst of Aline. She would never let a fellow's good things go
purely as good things; she probed and questioned and spoiled the
whole effect. He was quite sure that when he began to speak he
had meant something, but what it was escaped him for the moment.