game that generally followed it.  Better than anything else, however, was the father’s loud laugh and eager talk, so rarely heard in the course of their regular daily existence.  Even then he might be displeased by some slight slip of the boy’s, and a sharp rebuke might follow, but it seemed forgotten as soon as uttered, and of other consequences there were none to be feared.  Therefore, Keith wished that there might be a party every day, and while there was one going on he sometimes caught himself wondering whether, after all, he did not like his father as much as his mother, or more.

From his own experiences with food as well as from his parents’ attitude toward it, both on special and on ordinary occasions, Keith distilled a sort of philosophy that it took him several decades to outlive.  To him eating became a good thing in itself, rather than a means to an end.  His parents were neither gluttons nor gourmets, but they liked good food, and, what was of still greater importance, good eating represented the principal source of enjoyment open to them.  The same seemed true of their friends, and when company arrived no topic was more in favour than a comparison of past culinary enjoyments.  Keith’s father, for instance, never grew tired of telling about the time when he was still the chief clerk in a fashionable grocery and the owner gave him permission to dispose freely of a keg of Holland oysters that threatened to “go bad” before they could be sold.  Four or five friends were drummed together.  The feast took place at night in the store itself.  Bread, butter, salt, pepper, liquor, beer and cards were the only things added to the oysters.

“And when morning came, and I had to open the store, there was nothing left but a keg full of empty shells,” the father used to shout, laughing at the same time so that it was hard to catch what he said.  Then he would smack his lips and add with earnest conviction:  “I have never tasted anything better unless it be the Russian caviar we used to import for the Court.”

Always it was a matter of quantity as well as quality.  A feast was not a feast without more than plenty.  Eating was always in order.  An offer of a dish was as good as a command to partake.  A refusal bordered on the offensive.  Pressing a reluctant guest was the highest form of hospitality.  Dietary precautions were apparently unheard of except in the case of certain chronic ailments, and then they were accepted as one of life’s worst evils.  To eat well was to be well, and the natural conclusion was that the best cure in case of trouble was to eat.  Lack of appetite was a misfortune as well as a dangerous symptom, and to eat when not hungry was not only a necessity but a virtue.

Yet Keith longed for other things and he learned early that even eating has its drawbacks.

XVII

Except on Sundays, the father rarely ate with the rest of the family.  He left in the morning before Keith was up and never came home for breakfast.  His dinner often had to wait until five or six or even later, so he seldom cared to eat again when the others had their supper.