"Once more," he would say. "Pick up your feet, sir! Pick up your feet!"
And Jim would stagger doggedly past me, where I sat on the parapet, his
poor cheeks shaking and the tail of his bath robe wrapping itself around
his legs. Yes, he ran in the bath robe in deference to me. It seems
there isn't much to a running suit.
"Head up," Flannigan would say. "Lift your knees, sir. Didn't you ever
see a horse with string halt?"
He let him stop finally, and gave him a moment to get his breath. Then
he set him to turning somersaults. They spread the cushions from the
couch in the tent on the roof, and Jim would poke his head down and say
a prayer, and then curve over as gracefully as a sausage and come up
gasping, as if he had been pushed off a boat.
"Five pounds a day; not less, sir," Flannigan said encouragingly.
"You'll drop it in chunks."
Jim looked at the tin as if he expected to see the chunks lying at his
feet.
"Yes," he said, wiping the back of his neck. "If we're in here thirty
days that will be one hundred and fifty pounds. Don't forget to stop in
time, Flannigan. I don't want to melt away like a candle."
He was cheered, however, by the promise of reduction.
"What do you think of that, Kit?" he called to me. "Your uncle is going
to look as angular as a problem in geometry. I'll--I'll be the original
reductio ad absurdum. Do you want me to stand on my head, Flannigan?
Wouldn't that reduce something?"
"Your brains, sir," Flannigan retorted gravely, and presented a pair of
boxing gloves. Jim visibly quailed, but he put them on.
"Do you know, Flannigan," he remarked, as he fastened them, "I'm
thinking of wearing these all the time. They hide my character."
Flannigan looked puzzled, but he did not ask an explanation. He demanded
that Jim shed the bath robe, which he finally did, on my promise to
watch the sunset. Then for fully a minute there was no sound save of
feet running rapidly around the roof, and an occasional soft thud. Each
thud was accompanied by a grunt or two from Jim. Flannigan was grimly
silent. Once there was a smart rap, an oath from the policeman, and a
mirthless chuckle from Jim. The chuckle ended in a crash, however, and I
turned. Jim was lying on his back on the roof, and Flannigan was wiping
his ear with a towel. Jim sat up and ran his hand down his ribs.
"They're all here," he observed after a minute. "I thought I missed
one."
"The only way to take a man's weight down," Flannigan said dryly.
Jim got up dizzily.