"Well, keep on with it and eat—eat like a hobo! We'll make it! Don't exercise, don't even wink, if you can help it."
Pat took his instructions literally and obeyed them. He stayed in his room and gorged. His eyes became a trifle heavy and his face flushed, but at the end of two weeks he weighed only one hundred and fifty-nine pounds. Somehow, the next week he didn't do so well, gaining only three pounds more. Dame Nature, in mistaken kindness, was trying to adjust him to his new diet. Wheaton was becoming excited—only one hundred and sixty-two pounds, and only a week to gain something over three more in!
"We must hump ourselves!"
And Pat did "hump" himself, ate and drank with an assumed voracity, and had a slight attack of indigestion. This didn't help matters. The night before the examination he weighed only one hundred and sixty-four pounds and four ounces—three quarters of a pound short!
Wheaton was anxious but not despairing. "The examination begins at ten," he said. "Meet me here at four o'clock in the morning. We'll have six hours left."
At the hour named in the morning came Wheaton, carrying a big jug. "Have you had any beer, yet, Pat?" he asked.
"No sor."
"Then don't take any. You must be clear-headed when you go before the Commission. Here's a gallon of water, good water it is. You must drink it all before ten o'clock."
Pat looked dismayed. "Oi'll try sor."
Then began the struggle. Pat washed down his breakfast at once, very salt-broiled mackerel—which Wheaton had brought,—with the usual potatoes and a big beefsteak. After that every five minutes, Wheaton forced the poor fellow to drink a glass of water. At half-past nine the gallon was done. Pat, like the tea-drinkers of Ebenezer Chapel, "swelled wisibly." But Wheaton made him drink more water.