'Even the grown-ups began to indulge in these jam puffs, buying them in large quantities and falling ill one by one, much preferring to be tucked up snugly in bed with a comfortable bilious attack and the good-natured doctor in attendance, to ordinary good health and hard work, with the many disappointments and trials of everyday life.
'First the Lord Mayor was taken bad—then the leader of the town band and all his bandsmen. Now the shopmen began to feel queer, and one by one the aldermen toddled to their beds. In time everybody was laid up, and no one was left to do the work of the town. All the shops, theatres, markets, and railway stations were closed, and the streets quite deserted except for the doctor and the puff baker, each trying to undo the work of the other.
'Hardly a sound could be heard in the streets except perhaps the clink of a spoon against a bottle from a room above, as some patient prepared his evening dose, or the shuffling footsteps of the old doctor as he went his daily round, and sometimes the loud rat-tat of the puff baker would awaken the echoes of the lonely streets as he called from door to door for orders in the morning.
'Strange grasses and sweet-scented wild flowers began to grow in the streets, and mushrooms and straggling carrots forced a way between the crevices of the pavements. Sprays of wild spinach hung from the lamp-posts, and the market-place became one
waving jungle of broccoli. The very sparrows, deprived of their daily crumbs, grew thin and nervy with the green diet they were compelled to subsist upon. Croaking and griding, instead of chirruping musically to their young as is their wont, they so affected the good-hearted doctor that he could never pass them without some cheering word, and never could he withstand the beseeching look in their eyes. Within doors the prospect was hardly more encouraging. Strong vegetable-marrows twined their branches and their many tendrils round the table legs and the chairs; great turnips stoutened and burst upon the stairs; spring onions bristled in the corners of the Lord Mayor's dining-hall, while his grand piano was completely hidden in the gorgeous festoons of mint that, unchecked, had run a ragged riot about the place.
'At last, after two months of sickness, and despite every attention and kindness on the part of the doctor, the patients began to weary of being ill and kept to their beds for so long. The Lord Mayor was the first to arise and, although very weak in the legs, he managed to crawl to the top of the stairs, and looking down, beheld, to his dismay, the dreadful state of ruin in which everything was involved. He called for his servants as loudly as his weakness would allow him, and, obtaining no reply, he scrambled down the stairs on his hands and knees, and clamoured shrilly for a cut from the joint. As, of course, there was no one to procure this for him nor, indeed, any joint from which to procure a cut, he boiled himself an egg, and was able to survey the scene more calmly.