"What are those things on the top shelf?" asked Jimmieboy. "They look like sausages."
"They are sausages. I make 'em out of old tires, and they are very good and solid. Then, over there in the icebox, I have rubber steaks and chickens—in fact, all kinds of pneumatic food. You have no idea how well they last, and how good they are for the digestion—if you could only get used to them. That's the greatest trouble I have, getting people used to them."
"Don't you have any real good food here?" asked Bikey.
"Real? Why, my dear fellow," ejaculated the landlord, "what could you ask more real than those rubber viands? You could drop a railway engine on one of those rubber sausages and it would be just as solid as ever."
"But you can't live on air!" protested Jimmieboy.
"No more can you live without it," said the landlord, unlocking the door and opening it, some disappointment manifested in his countenance. "If you will come up to the hospital now, sir," he added, addressing Bikey, "I'll see what can be done to repair your wounds. I am sorry you do not seem to appreciate the good things in my larder."
"We'd appreciate 'em if we could see the good of 'em," said Jimmieboy. "What on earth can you do with a rubber mince pie besides not eat it?"
"Oh! as for that, you might use it for a football," retorted the landlord sadly, as he locked the door behind them and started down the corridor to the hospital room.
"I call it the hospital room," said he, "although I am aware that doesn't describe it. We don't take care of horses there, but as yet nobody has invented a word like bikepital, and so I do not use it. I have applied for a patent on that word, however, and as soon as I get it we'll change the name."
With these words they entered the hospital, and if the pantry was queer the hospital was a marvel.