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Young Cooley, a person of cheery manners and bright waistcoats, was one of Mellin's few sea-acquaintances; they had played shuffleboard together on the steamer during odd half-hours when Mr. Cooley found it possible to absent himself from poker in the smoking-room; and they encountered each other again on the channel boat crossing to Calais. "Hey!" was Mr. Cooley's lively greeting.
From the stone pavement of the street below came the sound of horses pawing and the voices of waiting cabmen; then bells again, and more bells; clamoring the slow and cruel afternoon into the past. But all was silent in Mellin's room, save when, from time to time, a long, shuddering sigh came from the bed.
X. The Cab at the Corner A ten o'clock, a page bearing a card upon a silver tray knocked upon the door, and stared with wide-eyed astonishment at the disordered gentleman who opened it. The card was Lady Mount-Rhyswicke's. Underneath the name was written: If you are there will you give me a few minutes? I am waiting in a cab at the next corner by the fountain. Mellin's hand shook as he read.
Mamma didn't like the idea of being chaperon for such a girl as Maida; but it was her own sister's daughter, and Mamma is as good-natured as a Mellin's Food Baby in a magazine, though she gets into little tempers sometimes. So she said, "Yes," and a fort-night later we all three sailed on a huge German steamer for Cherbourg.
We got very clever at it finally and very impudent and as the people were only two yards from us my windows being on a level with the tops of the buses and as we had a flaring illumination that lit up the street completely we had lots of fun with them especially with the busses, as we pretended to believe that the advertisements referred to the people on the top, and we would ask anxiously which lady was "Lottie Collins" and which gentleman had been brought up on " Mellin's Food" We had even more fun with the swells coming home from the Gala night at the opera and hemmed in between costers and Pickford's vans loaded down with women and children.
"You ain't goin' to make her out a liar? I tell you, when the Countess de Vaurigard says a man 's game, he is game!" He laid his big paw cordially on Mellin's shoulder and smiled, lowering his voice to a friendly whisper. "And I'll bet ten thousand dollars right out of my pants pocket you are game, too!" He pressed a glass into the other's hand. Smiling feebly, the embarrassed Mellin accepted it.
Pedlow's eyes were sheltered so deeply beneath florid rolls of flesh that all one saw of them was an inscrutable gleam of blue; but, small though they were, they were not shifty, for they met Mellin's with a squareness that was almost brutal. He offered a fat paw, wet by a full glass which he set down too suddenly on the bar. "Shake," he said, in a loud and husky voice, "and be friends!
He got up and helped her to lay another place at the table. The baby was awake now, and Mildred had prepared some Mellin's Food for it. The liver and bacon were ready and they sat down. For economy's sake Philip had given up drinking anything but water, but he had in the house a half a bottle of whiskey, and he thought a little would do Mildred good.
"Why, you know, Mr. Freet, that to run it through Mellin's place will cost $5,000 more and will force half a dozen farmers to double the length of their ditches. The lie of the canal in relation to grade, too, is a half mile east of Mellin's place." Arthur Freet raised his eyebrows. "I think that the canal had better go through Mellin's place." Jim drew a quick breath.
From this incident arose the widely published story that Bok cabled Kipling, asking permission to omit a certain drinking reference, and substitute something else, whereupon Kipling cabled back: "Substitute Mellin's Food." As Kipling himself wrote to Bok: "No, I said nothing about Mellin's Food. I wish I had."
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