Here he held the slender, dull-colored metallic band toward the boy.
"Keep it," said Rob.
The Demon started, and gave him an odd look.
"What did you say?" he asked.
"I told you to keep it," answered Rob. "I don't want it."
The Demon staggered back as if he had been struck.
"Don't want it!" he gasped.
"No; I've had enough of your infernal inventions!" cried the boy, with sudden anger.
He unclasped the traveling machine from his wrist and laid it on the table beside the Demon.
"There's the thing that's responsible for most of my troubles," said he, bitterly. "What right has one person to fly through the air while all his fellow-creatures crawl over the earth's surface? And why should I be cut off from all the rest of the world because you have given me this confounded traveling machine? I didn't ask for it, and I won't keep it a moment longer. Give it to some one you hate more than you do me!"
The Demon stared aghast and turned his glittering eyes wonderingly from Rob to the traveling machine and back again, as if to be sure he had heard and seen aright.
"And here are your food tablets," continued the boy, placing the box upon the table. "I've only enjoyed one square meal since you gave them to me. They're all right to preserve life, of course, and answer the purpose for which they were made; but I don't believe nature ever intended us to exist upon such things, or we wouldn't have the sense of taste, which enables us to enjoy natural food. As long as I'm a human being I'm going to eat like a human being, so I've consumed my last Electrical Concentrated Food Tablet--and don't you forget it!"
