"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.





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