“Hang the expense,” said the Babe, recklessly. “When a man’s got some tin, what can he do better than to give his pals a real blow out? I’ve got four shillings. Tea for three, and bread and butter for two. The fortune of the Rothschilds sprang from these small economies. Bread and butter for two will be plenty. I’m sure none of us can be very hungry on so warm a day. Oh, there’s a tuft-hair drinking out of a tall glass. I expect it’s gin-sling. What is gin-sling? In any case you can’t say it ten times. Ging-slin.” “I thought you could always say Ranjitsinghi, Babe.” “I can when other people are just unable to. Sufficient champagne gives me a wonderful lucidity, followed by sleepiness. There’s Stewart. I didn’t know he came to cricket matches.” Stewart was delighted to see them. “But you, Babe, are not fit for the society of ordinary people,” he said, “your extreme cheerfulness since your tripos argues a want of consideration for others. What have you been doing?” “I’ve been looking at cricket, and also talking.” “You don’t say so.” “I have, indeed,” said the Babe. “What effect does champagne have on you?” “Why do you ask these sudden questions?” said Stewart wearily. “It makes the wings of my soul sprout.” “The principle is the same. I ate lobster salad the other day and drank port. It did not give me indigestion, but acute remorse.” “Remorse for having done so?” “No, a vague searching remorse for all the foolish things I had done, and all the foolish things I meant to do, and for being what I was. Food doesn’t affect your body, it affects your soul. Conversely, sermons which are supposed to affect your soul make you hungry.” Stewart lit a match thoughtfully against the sleeve of his coat. “The Babe has hit on a great truth,” he said. “A curious instance occurred to my knowledge two years ago. A strong healthy man read _Robert Elsmere_. It gave him so severe an attack of dyspepsia that he had to spend the ensuing winter on the Riviera and eat pepsine instead of salt for eighteen months. Then he died. The phenomenon is well established. Poor Simpson, the fellow of my college, as you know, broke his leg the other day. It was supposed to have happened because he tripped and fell downstairs. But he told me himself that he was just leaving his room, and that as he walked down stairs he read the first few pages of _Stephen Remarx_. It was that, of course, that broke his leg, and so he fell down stairs as soon as he tried to put it to the ground. The Babe is quite right. Sermons, as he told us, make him hungry and lobster and port remorseful. In the same way, high tea, if frequently taken, will make anyone a non-conformist, in the same way as incense induces Roman Catholicism. But, Babe, don’t tell Longridge.” “Why not?” “He will want to talk about it to me, and then I shall be taken with melancholy madness. Are you coming up for another year, Babe?”