He wiped his lips, using the napkin with indignation, and looking at me.
It flashed through my mind in the midst of my depression that if all the
meat in the town was like these table d'hote chops, Falk wasn't so far
wrong. I was on the point of saying this, but Schomberg's stare was
intimidating. "He's a vegetarian, perhaps," I murmured instead.

"He's a miser. A miserable miser," affirmed the hotel-keeper with great
force. "The meat here is not so good as at home--of course. And dear
too. But look at me. I only charge a dollar for the tiffin, and one
dollar and fifty cents for the dinner. Show me anything cheaper. Why am
I doing it? There's little profit in this game. Falk wouldn't look
at it. I do it for the sake of a lot of young white fellows here that
hadn't a place where they could get a decent meal and eat it decently in
good company. There's first-rate company always at my table."

The convinced way he surveyed the empty chairs made me feel as if I had
intruded upon a tiffin of ghostly Presences.

"A white man should eat like a white man, dash it all," he burst out
impetuously. "Ought to eat meat, must eat meat. I manage to get meat for
my patrons all the year round. Don't I? I am not catering for a dam' lot
of coolies: Have another chop captain. . . . No? You, boy--take away!"

He threw himself back and waited grimly for the curry. The half-closed
jalousies darkened the room pervaded by the smell of fresh whitewash:
a swarm of flies buzzed and settled in turns, and poor Mrs. Schomberg's
smile seemed to express the quintessence of all the imbecility that had
ever spoken, had ever breathed, had ever been fed on infamous buffalo
meat within these bare walls. Schomberg did not open his lips till he