“Mostly it does stay down ...  I guess father’s all right,” he defended, “maybe the diet will do me good.”

“Do you ever get a beefsteak?”

“Father says meat is no good ... maybe he’s right about killing animals.  He says it wouldn’t be half so bad if everyone killed their own meat, instead of making brutes out of men who do the killing for them ... but it is kind of hard on the dog, though,” and the little fellow laughed.

* * * * *

“I think my boy is going to become an engineer of some sort; he’s always playing about with machinery,” Penton said to me....

“Suppose you let him take a trip with me to town, then?  I’m going to look through the Best o’ Wheat factory this afternoon, and watch how Best o’ Wheat biscuits are made.  Perhaps he’d like to see the machinery working!”

“Johnnie, I’ll trust him with you, if you’ll promise me not to meddle with his diet.”

“Of course.”

“I don’t like people stuffing him full of candy and ice cream.  I want to bring him up with a good digestion and sound teeth.”

* * * * *

Daniel took my hand as we went through the factory from department to department.  I enjoyed a paternal pride in the handsome, pale, preternaturally intelligent little fellow.

“Look at the young father!” exclaimed one girl softly to another, with a touch of pathos in her voice, intimating that perhaps I was a widower.

I blushed with pleasure to the tips of my ears, to be thought the father of so prepossessing a child.

It delighted him to look into the huge bake ovens where first the wheat was baked in big brown loaves, before it was broken up into biscuit form.  I thought of Hank Spalton and how he was supposed to have grown strong on a diet of Best o’ Wheat.

It was customary to serve sight-seers, in a dining room kept for that purpose, with Best o’ Wheat and cream, and wheat coffee ... free....

With a little reluctance Dan sat down and ate.

“Hum! that was good; but look here, Buzzer” (that was the nickname he had invented for me) you mustn’t tell Mubby.”

“Mubby?”

“That’s what mother and I call my father.”

“Of course I won’t tell him ... and now we must go to a restaurant and have something real to eat.”

“I can’t.  I don’t dare.  But I’ll sit and watch you eat.”

I ordered a steak, and persuaded Dan, finally, to have one too.

“If it’s not good for people to eat, why does it taste so good?” mooted Dan meditatively....

“Now I’ll be in for it,” he added, as we walked out of the door and started back to the Health Home.

“But your father need never know.”

“At first I thought it might be all right to fool him just this once.  But I mustn’t.  I’ve promised him I’d never lie to him about what I ate, and I must keep my word ... he’ll whip me, perhaps.”