"No, it isn't," said Hubbard. "The man who has gone out and has come in says to you, What food does the person you've chosen remind you of? and you say tapioca pudding or beef-steak and kidney pie."
"But," I said, "there's nobody in the whole wide world who reminds me of either of those things."
"Well, you can choose your own food," said Hubbard. "If you don't like tapioca pudding you can answer scrambled eggs. Only scrambled eggs must remind you of the person you have in your mind. Then you go on to the next man, and you ask him what cloth he reminds you of, and he answers tweed or Irish frieze or best Angola."
"Can anybody," said Butterfield, "tell me what 'best Angola' means? I've seen it often in my tailor's bills; mostly, I think, as waistcoats, but I've never known what it really is. If I had to guess now I should say it is something composed in equal parts of fancy waistcoats, tapioca pudding and scrambled eggs."
"Well, you'd be wrong," said Hubbard; "it's nothing of the sort. When you have got as far as scrambled eggs your man ought to begin to have a faint glimmering—"
"But," I said, "there's the tapioca pudding. What are you going to do with that? You can't be allowed to play fast and loose with that."
"Don't you see," said Hubbard, "that that's a mere example and now done with? Do please remember that we have got on to Irish frieze. You must allow me to explain the game in my own way. Now your man tackles the next person in turn. What building, he asks, does he remind you of? and the answer is Cologne Cathedral or the Bank of England."
"It would be difficult to choose anyone who reminded me of either of those celebrated structures," I said, "but I'll take the Bank of England for choice."
"But," said Hubbard, "you don't take either of them, you see it in a flash and it's gone."
"What do you see in a flash?" I said.