He nodded. “I thought you were an artist,” he said. “Don’t let them ever take your drum away from you. You’ll go to pieces and get into mischief without it.” “I wish he was dead!”!

Joan hoped she was exaggerating. “I must try and select a table where there is some good-natured girl to keep me in countenance,” she said with a smile. Mary hoped that Joan was hungry. Joan laughed and admitted that she was. “It’s the smell of all the nice things,” she explained. Mary promised it should soon be ready, and went back to her corner.

“Tell me,” she said, “what interfered with it?” Unconsciously she was leaning forward, her chin supported by her hands. Their faces were very near to one another. “There was an old Egyptian chap,” he said, “a governor of one of their provinces, thousands of years before the Pharaohs were ever heard of. They dug up his tomb a little while ago. It bore this inscription: ‘In my time no man went hungry.’ I’d rather have that carved upon my gravestone than the boastings of all the robbers and the butchers of history. Think what it must have meant in that land of drought and famine: only a narrow strip of river bank where a grain of corn would grow; and that only when old Nile was kind. If not, your nearest supplies five hundred miles away across the desert, your only means of transport the slow-moving camel. Your convoy must be guarded against attack, provided with provisions and water for a two months’ journey. Yet he never failed his people. Fat year and lean year: ‘In my time no man went hungry.’ And here, to-day, with our steamships and our railways, with the granaries of the world filled to overflowing, one third of our population lives on the border line of want. In India they die by the roadside. What’s the good of it all: your science and your art and your religion! How can you help men’s souls if their bodies are starving? A hungry man’s a hungry beast. “It’s just a homely affair,” she explained. She had recovered her form and was now quite the lady again. “Two other guests beside yourself: a Mr. Airlie—I am sure you will like him. He’s so dilletanty—and Mr. McKean. He’s the young man upstairs. Have you met him?”