Here's the soup.
Mrs.Reid, lay another place.

I am dreadfully hungry; nothing gives me such an appetite as unrolling mummies; it involves so much intellectual wear and tear, in addition to the physical labour.

Eat, man, eat.

We will talk afterwards." So we ate, Higgs largely, for his appetite was always excellent, perhaps because he was then practically a teetotaller; Mr.Orme very moderately, and I as becomes a person who has lived for months at a time on dates--mainly of vegetables, which, with fruits, form my principal diet--that is, if these are available, for at a pinch I can exist on anything.
When the meal was finished and our glasses had been filled with port, Higgs helped himself to water, lit the large meerschaum pipe he always smokes, and pushed round the tobacco-jar which had once served as a sepulchural urn for the heart of an old Egyptian.
"Now, Adams," he said when we also had filled our pipes, "tell us what has brought you back from the Shades.

In short, your story, man, your story." I drew the ring he had noticed off my hand, a thick band of rather light-coloured gold of a size such as an ordinary woman might wear upon her first or second finger, in which was set a splendid slab of sapphire engraved with curious and archaic characters.