“I know, it makes me look too fat,” said Regina in quite a crushed tone. “I am too fat.”
“Oh, I don’t know—you’re just comfortable.”
“No, Alfred, I’m too fat,” Regina reiterated with an air of firm conviction.
“Well, as to that,” said Alfred, slipping the letter into the letter-box, and wheeling round, still keeping hold of his wife’s arm, “I never did admire the ‘two-deal-board’ style of woman myself.”
Regina immediately decided in her own mind that the hussy was of the plump little partridge order.
“When I take hold of a lady’s arm,” continued Alfred, with the facetious air of a heavy father, “I like an arm that I can feel; I object to taking hold of a bone. No, no, my dear, you are not at all too fat, but I don’t think you ought to wear gowns, except purely for reasons of comfort, that tend to increase your apparent size.”
“But you don’t think it matters much?”
“I’m sure it does not matter very much.”
“Alfred, do you think that I am greatly altered?” She asked the question wistfully, as if the issue of life and death hung upon his reply.
“As a matter of fact,” said Alfred Whittaker, promptly, “I think you are the least altered of any woman I ever knew in my life. I see other women going to pieces in the most extraordinary manner. Now, Mrs. Chamberlain came into the office this morning. My goodness, what a wreck! Yellow as a guinea, her face lined all over—she made me think of a mummy.”