He was impervious to reason. I made him promise never to say a word to me about his disgusting fatness again whatever happened--never, and then I handed him that little piece of skin. “It's nasty stuff,” I said. “No matter,” he said, and took it. He goggled at it. “But--but--” he said. He had just discovered that it wasn't English. “To the best of my ability,” I said, “I will do you a translation.” I did my best. After that we didn't speak for a fortnight. Whenever he approached me I frowned and motioned him away, and he respected our compact, but at the end of a fortnight he was as fat as ever. And then he got a word in. “I must speak,” he said. “It isn't fair. There's something wrong. It's done me no good. You're not doing your great-grandmother justice.” “Where's the recipe?” He produced it gingerly from his pocket-book. I ran my eye over the items. “Was the egg addled?” I asked. “No. Ought it to have been?” “That,” I said, “goes without saying in all my poor dear great-grandmother's recipes. When condition or quality is not specified you must get the worst. She was drastic or nothing.... And there's one or two possible alternatives to some of these other things. You got FRESH rattlesnake venom.” “I got a rattlesnake from Jamrach's. It cost--it cost--” “That's your affair, anyhow. This last item--” “I know a man who--” “Yes. H'm. Well, I'll write the alternatives down. So far as I know the language, the spelling of this recipe is particularly atrocious. By-the-bye, dog here probably means pariah dog.” For a month after that I saw Pyecraft constantly at the club and as fat and anxious as ever. He kept our treaty, but at times he broke the spirit of it by shaking his head despondently. Then one day in the cloakroom he said, “Your great-grandmother--” “Not a word against her,” I said; and he held his peace. I could have fancied he had desisted, and I saw him one day talking to three new members about his fatness as though he was in search of other recipes. And then, quite unexpectedly, his telegram came. “Mr. Formalyn!” bawled a page-boy under my nose, and I took the telegram and opened it at once. “For Heaven's sake come.--Pyecraft.” “H'm,” said I, and to tell the truth I was so pleased at the rehabilitation of my great grandmother's reputation this evidently promised that I made a most excellent lunch. I got Pyecraft's address from the hall porter. Pyecraft inhabited the upper half of a house in Bloomsbury, and I went there so soon as I had done my coffee and Trappistine. I did not wait to finish my cigar. “Mr. Pyecraft?” said I, at the front door. They believed he was ill; he hadn't been out for two days. “He expects me,” said I, and they sent me up. I rang the bell at the lattice-door upon the landing. “He shouldn't have tried it, anyhow,” I said to myself. “A man who eats like a pig ought to look like a pig.”