“I’m afraid I’m growing a little too stout.”
George Washington walked around and looked at him with the critical gaze of a butcher appraising a fat ox.
“Oh! nor, suh, you aint, not to say too stout,” he finally decided as the result of this inspection, “you jis gittin’ sort o’ potely. Hit’s monsus becomin’ to you.”
“Do you think so?” The Major was manifestly flattered. “I was apprehensive that I might be growing a trifle fat,”—he turned carefully around before the mirror,—“and from a fat old man and a scrawny old woman, Heaven deliver us, George Washington!”
“Nor, suh, you ain’ got a ounce too much meat on you,” said George, reassuringly; “how much you weigh, Marse Nat, last time you was on de stilyards?” he inquired with wily interest.
The Major faced him.
“George Washington, the last time I weighed I tipped the beam at one hundred and forty-three pounds, and I had the waist of a girl.”
He laid his fat hands with the finger tips touching on his round sides about where the long since reversed curves of the lamented waist once were, and gazed at George with comical melancholy.
“Dat’s so,” assented the latter, with wonted acquiescence. “I ‘members hit well, suh, dat wuz when me and you wuz down in Gloucester tryin’ to git up spunk to co’te Miss Ailsy Mann. Dat’s mo’n thirty years ago.”
The Major reflected. “It cannot be thirty years!—thir—ty—years,” he mused.