“Does he, though?” she asked.
“We’ve been very careless about it,” I said. “Sometimes when he’s busy he doesn’t get any.”
“Please see that he gets a hot lunch every day,” she said. “Cold victuals are not good for him. And tea if he will drink it.”
I promised. An embarrassed silence followed. She was not quite through.
“Have you any Great Midwestern stock?” she asked.
“I have a small amount.”
“You must believe in it,” she said, adding after a pause: “We do.”
Then she was through.
Had she alone in that household always believed in Great Midwestern stock, which was to believe in him? Or had she only of a sudden become hopeful? Was it perhaps a flash of premonition, some slight exercise of the power possessed by her son? Long afterward I tried to find out. She shook her head and seemed not to understand what I was talking about. She had forgotten the incident.
The next day I ordered a hot lunch to be sent in and put upon Galt’s desk. He said, “Huh!” But he was not displeased, and ate it. And this became thereafter a fixed habit.