About four months after our first meeting this young woman brought a handsome young man with her, and after a pleasant chat, she said to me:
"We are engaged; but I have told my friend that I shall not consent to become his wife until I have a decent shape. When I came to you I weighed 209 pounds; I now weigh 163 pounds. I am ten times as strong, active, and healthy as I was then, and I have made up my mind, for my friend has left it altogether to me, that when I have lost ten or fifteen pounds more, we shall send you the invitations."
As the wedding day approached she brought the figures 152 on a card, and exclaimed, with her blue eyes running over:
"I am the happiest girl in the world, and don't you think I have honestly earned it? I think I am a great deal happier than I should have been had I not worked for it."
The papers said the bride was beautiful. I thought she was, and I suppose no one but herself and husband felt as much interested in that beauty as I did. I took a sort of scientific interest in it.
We made the usual call upon them during the first month, and when, two months after the wedding, they were spending the evening with us, I asked him if his wife had told him about my relations with her avoirdupois? He laughed heartily, and replied:
"Oh, yes, she has told me everything, I suppose: but wasn't it funny?"
"Not very. I am sure you wouldn't have thought it funny if you could have heard our first interview. It was just the reverse of funny; don't you think so madam?"
"I am sure it was the most anxious visit I ever paid any one. Doctor, my good husband says he should have married me just the same, but I think he would have been a goose if he had."
"Yes," said the husband, "it was foreordained that we two should be one."