Invaders from Nowhere

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WILLARD BUTLAND did not yet know about the Alans as he surveyed Antonio's with riotous distaste. The proprietor had called the restaurant that to distinguish it from the seven Manhattan restaurants named Tony's. Butland would have called the place a den of iniquity—or perhaps a sink of iniquity; more picturesque—except for the fact that the word "iniquity" was, to his lay friends and acquaintances in the States, a comic one. This fact distressed Willard Butland. To him, iniquity was not at all a light matter. He often wrestled with his soul on the question, to why resolved: that is was unreasonable to spend his young life carrying the gospel to the heathen of India when so many of his godless fellow-Americans were in obviously greater need of it.

For instance, he thought, coughing from the smoke of the vile weed, there was his cousin Rex Piper across the table. Rex Piper was tall, thin, and dark, whereas Willard Butland was of medium height, plump, and sandy, with adolescent freckles lingering on a stub-nose of the kind one sees on funny-paper characters. Rex Piper would have called Antonio's a joint or dive, though the place with its orderly clientele and handsome modern furnishings did not deserve such contumely.

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