I thought of my wife, who had gone into the kitchen and, for all I knew, was as thin as the house, and I went charging in the back door, yelling.
"Are you all right?"
"Of course I'm all right," she said. "What's the matter with you?"
I grabbed her and she was all there, thank heavens. She giggled and called me an old fool, but I dragged her outside and showed her what had happened to our house.
She saw it, too, so I knew I didn't have sunstroke, but she couldn't understand it any better than I.
Right about then, I detected a prominent absence of whiskabooming. "Jack!" I hollered, and we hurried back into the house and upstairs.
Well, Mr. Gretch, it was so pitiful, I can't describe it. He was there, but I never saw a more miserable human being. He was not only thin but also flat, like a cartoon of a man who had been steamrollered. He was lying on the bed, holding onto the covers, with no more substance to him than a thin piece of paper. Less.
