“Ah! you needn’t tell me. I know. But I’m not going to pump you. If you want to keep it dark why you’ve run away from home, you’ve a right to. What were you going to say, Smithson?”
Dick was growing nervous and excited, and jumped at the change in the conversation.
“I was going to say that, as it is such a pity for you to grow so stout, why don’t you eat less?”
“Eat! My dear boy, I almost starve myself.”
“Drink less, then. If I were you, I wouldn’t take so much beer.”
“But I don’t, Smithson; I don’t—I give it up ever so long ago—only ginger, and that can’t make me fat. It don’t make no difference whether I eat and drink hearty or starve myself: it all goes to fat. I really believe sometimes that the very wind agrees with me and runs to it.”
“Then do as the colonel said—train, run, use the clubs.”
“I have,” cried Brumpton, “for months; but I only get worse.”
“Don’t sleep quite so much, then.”
“Oh, dear!” groaned the sergeant; “I’ve cut myself down to five hours, and surely that oughtn’t to be too much. It’s no good, Smithson—not a bit! If I was to be shut up in a lump of coal, like a toad, I should go on getting fat till the coal split up the back, like one of my jackets.”