Page:Lieut Gullivar Jones - His Vacation - Edwin Arnold (1905).djvu/103

 dered piping round the palace to call folk to meals, a smell of roast meat and grilling fish as that procession lifted the curtains between the halls, and

"Dinner!" shouted my sweet Martian, slapping the covers of "The Secret of the Gods" together and pushing the stately tome headlong from the table. "Dinner! 'tis worth a hundred thousand planets to the hungry!"

Nothing I could say would keep her, and, scarcely knowing whether to laugh or to be angry at so unseemly an interruption, but both being purposeless I dug my hands into my pockets, and somewhat sulkily refusing Heru's invitation to luncheon in the corridor (Navy rations had not fitted my stomach for these constant debauches of gossamer food), strolled into the town again in no very pleasant frame of mind.