story, as the novelists say, and I trust, as he goes on, the reader may feel with me that that would have been a pity. Besides, with that prevision given to an author, I am strongly of opinion that something will happen before long. And if the worst comes to the worst, there is always that story of my First Love wherewith to fill the time. Meanwhile I am approaching a decorative old Surrey town, little more than a cluster of ripe old inns, to one of which I have much pleasure in inviting the reader to dinner. CHAPTER VII PRANDIAL Dinner! Is there a more beautiful word in the language? Dinner! Let the beautiful word come as a refrain to and fro this chapter. Dinner! Just eating and drinking, nothing more, but so much! Drinking, indeed, has had its laureates. Yet would I offer my mite of prose in its honour. And when I say "drinking," I speak not of smuggled gin or of brandy bottles held fiercely by the neck till they are empty. Nay, but of that lonely glass in the social solitude of the tavern,—alone, but not alone, for the glass is sure to bring a dream to bear it company, and it is a poor dream that cannot raise a song. And what greater felicity than to be alone in a tavern with your last new song, just born and yet still a tingling part of you. Drinking has indeed been sung, but why, I have heard it asked, have we no "Eating Songs?"—for eating is, surely, a fine pleasure. Many practise it already, and it is becoming more general every day. I speak not of the finicking joy of the gourmet, but the joy of an honest appetite in ecstasy, the elemental joy of absorbing quantities of fresh simple food,—mere roast lamb, new potatoes, and peas of living green. It is, indeed, an absorbing pleasure. It needs all our attention. You must eat
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