great-grandmother's remedies appear to me at least to be extraordinarily
uninviting. For my own part----

"I took a little sip first."

"Yes?"

"And as I felt lighter and better after an hour, I decided to take the
draught."

"My dear Pyecraft!"

"I held my nose," he explained. "And then I kept on getting lighter and
lighter--and helpless, you know."

He gave way suddenly to a burst of passion. "What the goodness am I to
_do?_" he said.

"There's one thing pretty evident," I said, "that you mustn't do. If you
go out of doors you'll go up and up." I waved an arm upward. "They'd have
to send Santos-Dumont after you to bring you down again."

"I suppose it will wear off?"

I shook my head. "I don't think you can count on that," I said.

And then there was another burst of passion, and he kicked out at adjacent
chairs and banged the floor. He behaved just as I should have expected a
great, fat, self-indulgent man to behave under trying circumstances--that
is to say, very badly. He spoke of me and of my great-grandmother with an
utter want of discretion.

"I never asked you to take the stuff," I said.

And generously disregarding the insults he was putting upon me, I sat down
in his armchair and began to talk to him in a sober, friendly fashion.

I pointed out to him that this was a trouble he had brought upon himself,
and that it had almost an air of poetical justice. He had eaten too much.
This he disputed, and for a time we argued the point.

He became noisy and violent, so I desisted from this aspect of his lesson.
"And then," said I, "you committed the sin of euphuism. You called it, not
Fat, which is just and inglorious, but Weight. You----"

He interrupted to say that he recognised all that. What was he to
_do?_

I suggested he should adapt himself to his new conditions. So we came to
the really sensible part of the business. I suggested that it would not be
difficult for him to learn to walk about on the ceiling with his hands----

"I can't sleep," he said.

But that was no great difficulty. It was quite possible, I pointed out, to
make a shake-up under a wire mattress, fasten the under things on with
tapes, and have a blanket, sheet, and coverlet to button at the side. He
would have to confide in his housekeeper, I said; and after some
squabbling he agreed to that. (Afterwards it was quite delightful to see
the beautifully matter-of-fact way with which the good lady took all these
amazing inve