"My esteemed new brother," Owen answered, "we have been considering your case in conclave assembled, and we think it is wiser to feed you for awhile and demand by all the rites of hospitality that you eat what is set before you and ask no questions for conscience sake. When you begin to pine, to lose your appetite, to look wan and hollow-eyed, then we may reconsider. Meanwhile we will tell you everything you want to know about food in general, and even some particulars--present dishes always excepted." "I will now produce information," began Hallie, "my office being that of Food Inspector." "Her main purpose in bringing you here, Uncle, was to give you food and then talk about it," said Jerrold solemnly. Hallie only made a face at him, and went on: "We have a magnificent system of production and distribution," she explained, "with a decreasing use of animal foods." "Was this a vegetarian meal?" I asked in a hollow voice. "Mostly; but you shall have meat when you want it--better meat than you used to get, too." "Cold Storage Meat?" "Oh, no; that's long since stopped. The way we manage about meat is this: A proper proportion of edible animals are raised under good conditions--nice, healthy, happy beasts; killed so that they don't know it!--and never kept beyond a certain time limit. You see----" she paused, looking for the moment like her mother, "the whole food business is changed--you don't realize----" "Go ahead and tell me--tell me all--my life at present is that of Rollo, I perceive, and I am most complacent after this meal." "Uncle, I rejoice in your discovery, I do indeed. You are an uncle after my own heart," said Jerrold. So my fair niece, looking like any other charming girl in a pretty evening frock, began to expound her specialty. Her mother begged to interrupt for the moment. "Let me recall to him things as they were--which you hardly know, you happy child. Don't forget, John, that when we were young we did not know what good food was." I started to protest, but she shook her finger at me. "No, we didn't, my dear boy. We knew 'what we liked,' as the people said at the picture show; but that did not make it good--good in itself or good for us. The world was ill-fed. Most of the food was below par; a good deal was injurious, some absolutely poison. People sold poison for food in 1910, don't forget that! You may remember the row that was beginning to be made about it." I admitted recalling something of the sort, though it had not particularly interested me at the time. "Well, that row went on--and gained in force. The women woke up." "If you have said that once since we met, my dear sister, you've said it forty times. I wish you would make a parenthesis in these food discussions and tell me how, when and why the women woke up." Nellie looked a little dashed, and Owen laughed outright.