“How are you, Podge?” I said, as I sat down in a leather armchair beside him.
I only meant “How-do-you-do?” but he rolled his big eyes sideways at me in his flabby face (it was easier than moving his face) and he answered:
“I’m not as well to-day as I was yesterday afternoon. Last week I was feeling pretty good part of the time, but yesterday about four o’clock the air turned humid, and I don’t feel so well.”
“Have a cigarette?” I said.
“No, thanks; I find they affect the bronchial toobes.”
“Whose?” I asked.
“Mine,” he answered.
“Oh, yes,” I said, and I lighted one. “So you find the weather trying,” I continued cheerfully.
“Yes, it’s too humid. It’s up to a saturation of sixty-six. I’m all right till it passes sixty-four. Yesterday afternoon it was only about sixty-one, and I felt fine. But after that it went up. I guess it must be a contraction of the epidermis pressing on some of the sebaceous glands, don’t you?”
“I’m sure it is,” I said. “But why don’t you just sleep it off till it’s over?”