"They don't hurt me," whined Alf.
"They don't, eh?" demanded Reade, rising and drawing himself up to his full height of five-feet-eleven. "Drew, do you think you look as healthy as I do?"
As he stood there, erect as a soldier, with his fine athletic figure revealed, and the bronze on his face seemingly inches deep, Tom Reade looked what he was—-every inch a man though still a boy in years.
"Do you think you look as healthy as I do?" Tom repeated.
"No-o-o-o," admitted Alf. "But you're older'n me."
"Not so much, as years go," Tom rejoined. "For that matter, if you go on with your cigarettes you'll be an old man before I get through with being a young man. Fill up your chest, Alf; expand it—-like this."
As he expanded his chest Reade looked a good deal more like some
Greek god of old than a twentieth century civil engineer.
Alf puffed and squirmed in his efforts to show "some chest."
"That isn't the right way," Tom informed him. "Breathe deeply and steadily. Draw in your stomach and expand your chest. Fill up the upper part of your lungs with air. Watch! Right here at the top of the chest."
Alf watched. For that matter he seemed unable to remove his gaze from the splendid chest development that young Reade displayed so easily. Then the boy tried to fill the upper portions of his own lungs in the same manner. The attempt ended in a spasm of coughing.