"I see you're a stranger here," he remarked. "There's a _table-d'hote_ luncheon for the modest sum of eighteenpence, which is the cheapest way to feed, if it's decent. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. I thought perhaps you might have sampled it." "I believe I have," Douglas answered. "I told the waiter to bring me the ordinary lunch, and I thought it was very good indeed." "Then I will risk it. Henri. Come here, you scamp." He gave a few orders to the waiter, who treated him with much respect. Then he turned again to Douglas. "You have nearly finished," he said. "Please don't hurry. I hate to eat alone. It is a whim of mine. If I eat alone I read, and if I read I get dyspepsia. Try the oat biscuits and the Camembert." Douglas did as the newcomer had suggested. "I am in no hurry," he said. "I have nothing to do, nor anywhere to go." "Lucky man!" "You speak as though that were unusual," Douglas laughed, "but I was just thinking that every one here seems to be in the same state. Some one once told me that London was a city of sadness. Who could watch the people here and say so?" The newcomer screwed in his eyeglass and looked deliberately round the room. "Well," he said, "this is a resort of the poor, and the poor are seldom sad. It is the unfortunate West-Enders who carry the burdens of wealth and the obligation of position, who have earned for us the reproach of dulness. Here we are on the threshold of Bohemia. Long life and health to it." He drank a glass of Chianti with the air of a connoisseur tasting some rare vintage. Douglas laughed softly. "If the people here are poor," he said, "what about me? I pawned my watch because I had had nothing to eat since yesterday." His new friend sighed and stuck his fork into an olive. "What affluence," he sighed, meditatively. "I have not possessed a watch for a year, and I've only ninepence in my pocket. They give me tick here. Foolish Spargetti. Long may their confidence last!" A companion in impecuniosity. Douglas looked at his neat clothes and the flower in his buttonhole, and wondered. "But you have the means of making money if you care to." "Have I?" The eyeglass was carefully removed, the small wizened face assumed a lugubrious aspect. "My friend," he said, "in a measure it is true--but such a small measure. A cold-blooded and unappreciative editor apprises my services at the miserable sum of three pounds a week. I have heard of people who have lived upon that sum, but I must confess that I never met one." "You are a writer, then?" Douglas exclaimed, eagerly. "I am a sort of hack upon the staff of the _Ibex_. They set me down in a corner of the office and throw me scraps of work, as you would bones to a dog. It is not dignified, but one must eat and drink--not to mention smoking. Permit me, by-the-bye, to offer you a cigarette, and to recommend the coffee. I taught Spargetti how to make it myself." Douglas was listening with flushed cheeks. The _Ibex_! What a coincidence!