“But why the sheet, Auntie?” she asked, as the good lady went on with her self-inflicted punishment.
“Wal,” panted Aunt ’Mira, at length obliged to sit down for breath, “I jest wanted to see how I’d look in one o’ them Grecian costumes they picter there. I’ve looked at hundreds an’ hundreds of picters of Greeks in their draperies, and I’ve failed yet to see a fat one. Janice, don’t you s’pose there never was any fat people in them ancient times?”
“I suppose there must have been—some,” admitted Janice, much amused. “But they don’t put them in pictures. Besides,” she added thoughtfully, “the way the Greeks lived and exercised, and all, would naturally tend to make perfect bodies and almost eliminate the liability of one’s having too much flesh.”
Aunt ’Mira snorted her disgust. “I declare to man!” she cried. “If a body’s going to be fat, they’ll be fat. That’s all there is to it, I reckon. I’ve tried my best; and though I’m some more limber than I was, you know yourself, Janice, I’m jest as fat as ever.
“No, Ma’am! Ye can’t tell me! They never put the fat Greeks in picters—jest kep’ ’em in the background, same’s they try to do with fat people nowadays. And if it’s your fate to be fat, why, ye will be, and that’s all there is about it.
“Ye don’t suppose, Niece Janice, that I let this fat come upon me without a struggle, do ye? I—should—say—not!” cried Aunt ’Mira, with energy. “Why, I fought it tooth and toe-nail!”
“When me an’ Jason was keepin’ comp’ny I was afraid he’d be scare’t at sech a mountain of flesh as I was then, and I dunno how many strings I broke tryin’ to pull in my stays. I wonder I didn’t squeeze all my internal consarns inter mush, I declare!
“But the more I ever done to try to take off flesh, the more I put it on. Why, Janice, I was a fat baby, and a fat young’un. I was jest about square—like a brick. You could ha’ set me any side up—I’d stood jest as well one way as t’other. There warn’t no more escape for me from flesh than there is from death when my time comes.
“You’d oughter seen me when I was a little toddler, goin’ to old Marcy Coe’s to school. In them days there warn’t much of a public school here in Polktown—it only kep’ three months in the year, anyway. Miss Marcy Coe kep’ a sort of private school for the little tads, right in her own settin’-room. When they got too big for her to punish, they graduated to the reg’lar school.
“And believe me!” Aunt ’Mira exclaimed, with energy, “Miss Marcy Coe sartainly was ingenious in her punishments. I’ll never forgit one thing she useter make me do when I was bad. She was most always sewing while she sat and listened to us readin’ out of our little lesson-books, and her thimble was a very handy weapon.