"Any favorite dish you'd like to add, Major?" asked Aladdin, genially.
The old man's eyes filled with tears at this exhibition of kindness, even at this moment when they were practically enemies at swords' points. He could not remember in his own line of effort in many years that he had himself ever extended any consideration to a fallen foe.
"Why, I don't know," said he, his voice growing husky with emotion. "Sometimes in the midst of all the luxury I am enjoying to-day my mind runs back to those early days on the old farm when my mother's apple pies seemed to be the perfection of culinary art."
"Say no more, Major; you shall have your wish," laughed Aladdin. Then, turning to the waiting attendant, he added, "Sambo, you may add to that order one full portion of pallid pippin pie for pale people, with a glass of buttermilk on the side."
An hour later the happy little party—for Major Bondifeller had warmed up considerably under the exhilarating influence of his strange surroundings—broke up with a sense of repletion that neither Aladdin nor his poor mother had enjoyed for many years. Indeed, it is doubtful if the young man himself had ever had so square a meal as that in all his life before. Over the cigars, Bondifeller tried to take up the thread of their before-dinner discourse.
"As for that business suggestion of yours—" he began, flicking the ash airily from the end of his cigar, but Aladdin stopped him.
"I make it a rule never to talk business at or immediately after dinner, Major," he said, reprovingly. "The hour is late and dungeon number thirty-seven awaits you. I trust you will sleep well. Sambo, show this gentleman to his room."
"But—" began Bondifeller.
"On your way, Sambo!" said Aladdin. "And, remember, that if this gentleman turns up missing in the morning you lose your union card. Good-night!"
When Aladdin awoke the following morning it was only natural that he should regard the events of the night before as nothing more than a fantastic dream, and he was chuckling softly to himself over its manifest absurdities, when all of a sudden he spied the lamp on the table of his humble little room. He eyed it keenly for a few minutes, and then springing from the bed he seized it in his left hand and began rubbing it feverishly with his right. As had invariably happened before, the genie responded on the instant.