“I know,� said the listener. “A harmless vegetable compound which reduces the bulkiest middle-aged human figure of either sex in the course of a few weeks to the slender proportions of graceful youth. Three-and-sixpence a bottle, sent secretly packed, to any address in the United Kingdom. Bis!�
“He then,� continued the narrator, “went in for ‘Frosher’s Fat-Reducing Soap.’ Perhaps you are not acquainted with that compound, which is rubbed briskly into the—ah—the——�
“Personality,� put in the other man.
“... Until a strong lather is obtained. The lather proved ineffectual; Shelmadine took to stays.�
“Phew!� puffed the other man.
The first man continued:
“As the weary weeks went on he was compelled to return to his desk at Whitehall—crouching in a taxicab to avoid observation. But concealment was useless. From the Department allotted to the Second Division Higher-Grade clerks the secret crept out, and Society pounced upon it and tore it to shreds, shrieking.�
“Like ’em,� said the listener—“like ’em!�
“That night, as Shelmadine sat in his dainty dressing-room surrounded by mountains of costly and elegant clothes, which, though only of the previous season’s make, would no longer accommodate his proportions,� went on Bonson—“lounging clothes, shooting clothes, walking clothes of all descriptions—London did not contain a wretcheder man. The exquisitely chosen waist-coats, the taffetas shirts of the once slim dandy of the War Office—a world too narrow for the fat man who now represented him were in piles about him. Dozens of lovely gloves in all the newest shades—squirrel-gray, dead-leaf yellow, Havana-brown, chrysanthemum-buff—were scattered around by the hands that were now too stout to wear them. Piles of boots—afternoon boots, with uppers of corduroy leather, gray, fawn, or the white antelope, emblematical of the blameless pattern of virtue; walking boots, shooting boots, and shoes of all descriptions; slippers in heliotrope, rose-petal pink, and lizard-skin green, obscured the furniture. The pedal extremities that had bulged beyond all reasonable limits must now be accommodated in large Number Nines. Even Shelmadine’s dressing gowns—foulard silk, lined with cashmere—had declined to contain him.�
“’Pon my word, you make me sorry for the idiot,� said the listener; “mere clothes-peg, as he seems to have been!�