"Afraid you're wrong this time, Gorman. Not getting it round the waist anyway. Buckled in the same hole and not a bit tighter than before.
"Thin you're gettin' it round the jaws of you. Checks and double chin loike a howly father starvin' in Lent."
"Surely it's not so bad as that! I'll have to get more exercise. Nothing like training to keep down flesh. Run four or five miles of a morning. That's what will do it."
"Bedad thin, if that's thrue, that American gineral the Chinese have must have run all the way from Ameriky. Did iver you clap your two eyes on such a split-the-wind?"
"He sure is thin," replied Sinclair in the idiom of his native land. "As we used to say in Canada, he'd be handy to send on an errand down a pump."
"Faith," replied the Irishman, determined not to be beaten in exaggeration, "the pump would need to have a good valve or he'd leak out."
"You have it," laughed Sinclair. "I'll quit."
"Now, what do you make of him, anyway?"
"New England Yankee by his twang. Vermont by his build. Been in the South by his pronunciation of some words. But when he swears Montana is written all over him."
Now, if that isn't divilish cliver of you to spot him loike that! Now, isn't it? But did ever you hear such a name? Silas Z. Leatherbottom! Be the powers, if I had a name loike that, I'd change it or die in the attempt. Silas Z. Leatherbottom!"