“You’ll starve if you don’t eat.”

“I’d rather starve than take pills.”

“Nonsense!”

“I would!”

“It won’t take you but a second to swallow ’em, Bob,” Fitz Mee said coaxingly. “That’s one of the advantages of our kind of food; it don’t take long to eat a meal.”

“I never begrudged the time I spent in eating,” Bob remarked, with rather a sickly grin.

“Well, down the tablets—that’s a good boy.”

“Are those—those things all you’ve got to eat?”

“Yes.”