“Eggs, rolls, and coffee.” “Oh! Eggs every morning?” “Two of them. Medium boiled.” “Not even the method is varied. Same eggs, same preparation every morning, seven days a week, four weeks a month, twelve months—” “No. That’s my winter breakfast only.” “Very well; four or five months in the year. No wonder your poor stomach gets bored.” “What’s the matter with eggs, Dr. Strong?” inquired Manny. “They let us have ‘em, in training.” “Nothing is the matter with two eggs, or twenty. But when you come to two hundred, there’s something very obvious the matter—monotony. Your stomach is a machine, it’s true, but it’s a human machine. It demands variety.” “Then Charles ought to be a model. He wants everything from soup to pie.” “A thoroughly normal desire for a growing boy.” “He eats an awful lot of meat,” observed Julia, who was a somewhat fastidious young lady. “My Sunday-school teacher calls meat-eaters human tigers.” “Oh, that’s too easy a generalization, Junkum,” replied the Health Master. “With equal logic she could say that vegetable-eaters are human cows.” “But the vegetarians make very strong arguments,” said Mrs. Clyde. “A lot of pale-eyed, weak-blooded nibblers!” stated Grandma Sharpless. “If meat weren’t good for us, we wouldn’t have been eating it all these generations.” “True enough. Perhaps we eat a little too much of it, particularly in the warm months. But in winter it’s practically a necessity.” “Some of the big athletes say they’re vegetarians,” said Manny. “There are individual cases,” admitted the Health Master; “but in the long run it doesn’t work. A vegetarian race is, generally speaking, small of stature and build, and less efficient than a meat-eating race. The rule of eating is solid food, sound food, plenty of it, and a good variety. Give your stomach a fair chance: don’t overload it, don’t understock it, and don’t let it get bored.” For some time Miss Bettina had been conducting a quiet and strategic advance upon the Health Master, and now by a sudden onslaught she captured his knee and, perching herself thereon, put a soft and chubby hand under his chin. “You want something, Miss Toodles,” he accused with a formidable frown. “None of your wheedling ways with me! Out with it!” “Candy,” said the child, in no way impressed by his severity. “Candy, indeed! When?” “Now. Any time. Lots of it. Lots of sugar, too.” “Betty’s developing _such_ a sweet tooth!” mourned her mother. “I have to limit her rigidly.” “Why?” “You wouldn’t let the child stuff herself on sweets all the time,” protested Grandma Sharpless, scandalized. “Nor on anything else. But if she craves sweets, why not let her have them at the proper time?” “Well, in my day children ate plain food and were thankful.” “Hm! I’m a little dubious about the thankfulness. And in your day children died more frequently and more easily than in ours.” “They weren’t pampered to death on candy, anyway!”