"Yes sir, considerable."
"Do you drink much?"
"Yes sir, some ale, and water most all the time."
"Madam, I am astonished! Keep on with that diet and you'll weigh half a ton before you die, and you'll die within six months."
The Fat Woman gasped and turned pallid. She was influenced not only by love but by acute alarm.
The Professor looked upon her benignly.
"Madam," he said, "I can save you. My condensed Food Tablets and my Spirituelle Waters will do the business. The tablets will afford you sufficient sustenance for existence without affording any element for the increase of adipose tissue, while my Spirituelle Waters will gratify your thirst—the more you drink of them the better—while, at the same time, they will exercise an influence of their own. Get your tablets here at this office—fifty cents a hundred—Spirituelle Waters here too—quart bottles, twenty-five cents a bottle. Prescription: ten tablets and one bottle of the water to a meal; another bottle of the Waters before retiring. Drink all the Spirituelle Water you want during the day. Ten dollars. Report fortnightly. Good afternoon."
The professors knew their business. There could be no doubt of that. Not with any sunburst, so to speak, but steadily and day by day, the Ossified Man increased in flexibility and tissue and the Fat Woman decreased in fat.
There came a day when the Museum manager observed the change and sent for the Ossified Man.
"What's the matter, Jim?" asked the potentate.