Young Lockman flung himself into an easy chair and proceeded to cross-question his companion. He wanted to know all about the interview with “Old Stew”; and afterwards, having managed to divine Samuel's attitude to himself, he led him to talk about that, which Samuel did with the utmost frankness. “Gee, but you're a queer duffer!” was Lockman's comment; but Samuel didn't mind that.
The butler came with the meal--carrying it on a big tray, and with another man to carry a folding table, and yet another to help. Such a display of silver and cut glass! Such snowy linen, and such unimaginable viands! There were piles of sandwiches, each one half a bite for a fairly hungry man. There was jellied game, and caviar, and a pate of something strange and spicy. Nothing was what one would have expected--there were eggs inside of baked potatoes, and ice cream in some sort of crispy cake. The crackers looked like cakes, and the cakes like crackers, and the cheese was green and discouraging. But a bowl of strawberries and cream held out a rich promise at the end, and Samuel took heart.
“Fall to,” said the host; and then divining the other's state of mind, he remarked, “You needn't serve, Peters,” and the men went away, to Samuel's vast relief.
“Don't mind me,” added Lockman laughing. “And if there's any question you want to ask, all right.”
So Samuel tasted the food of the gods; a kind of food which human skill and ingenuity had labored for centuries to invent, and for days and even weeks to prepare. Samuel wondered vaguely where all these foods had come from, and how many people had had a hand in their preparation; also he wondered if all those who ate them would become as beautiful and as dazzling as his young friend.
The friend meanwhile was vastly diverted, and was bent upon making the most of his find. “I suppose you'd like to see the place?” he said.
“Come and I'll show it to you--that is, If you're able to walk after the meal.”
The meal did not trouble Samuel, and they went out and took a stroll. And so the boy met with yet another revelation of the possibilities of existence.
If there was anything in the world he would have supposed he understood, it was farming; but here at “Fairview” was farming as it was done by the methods of Science. At home they had had some lilac bushes and a row of peonies; here were acres of greeneries, filled with flowers of gorgeous and unimaginable splendor, and rare plants from every part of the world. At home it had been Samuel's lot to milk the cow, and he had found it a trying job on cold and dark winter mornings; and here was a model dairy, with steam heat and electric light, and tiled walls and nickel plumbing, and cows with pedigrees in frames, and attendants with white uniforms and rubber gloves. Then there was a row of henhouses, each for a fancy breed of fowl--some of them red and lean as herons, and others white as snow and as fat and ungainly as hogs. And then out in front, at one corner of the lawn, was the aviary, with houses for the peacocks and lyre birds, and for parrots and magpies and innumerable strange birds from the tropics. Also there were dog kennels with many dozens of strange breeds.