I ran my eye over the items. “Was the egg addled?” I asked.
“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.