ations of some
unknown newspaper prophet. She bought elaborate gymnastic appliances,
and swung dumbbells and rode imaginary horses and propelled imaginary
boats. She ran races with a professional trainer, and she studied the
principles of Delsarte, and solemnly whirled on one foot and swayed her
body and rolled her head and hopped and kicked and genuflected in
company with eleven other stout and earnest matrons and one slim and
giggling girl who almost choked at every lesson. In all these exercises
Miss Hopkins faithfully kept her company, which was the easier, as Miss
Hopkins lived in the next house, a conscientious Colonial mansion with
all the modern conveniences hidden beneath the old-fashioned pomp.

And yet, despite these struggles and self-denials, it must be told that
Margaret Ellis and Lorania Hopkins were little thinner for their
warfare. Still, as Shuey Cardigan, the trainer, told Mrs. Ellis, there
was no knowing what they might have weighed had they not struggled.

"It ain't only the fat that's _on_ ye, moind ye," says Shuey, with a
confidential sympathy of mien; '"it's what ye'd naturally be getting in
addition. And first ye've got to peel off that, and then ye come down to
the other."

Shuey was so much the most successful of Mrs. Ellis' reducers that his
words were weighty. And when at last Shuey said, "I got what you need,"
Mrs. Ellis listened. "You need a bike, no less," says Shuey.

"But I never could ride one!" said Margaret, opening her pretty brown
eyes and wrinkling her Grecian forehead.

"You'd ride in six lessons," pronounced Shuey.

"But how would I _look_, Cardigan?"

"You'd look noble, ma'am!"

"What do you consider the best wheel, Cardigan?"

Fear of being accused of advertising prevents my giving Cardigan's
answer; it is enough that the wheel glittered at Mrs. Ellis' door the
very next day, and that a large pasteboard box was delivered by the
expressman the very next week. He went on to Miss Hopkins', and
delivered the twin of the box, with a similar yellow printed card
bearing the impress of the same great firm on the inside of the box
cover. For Margaret had hied her to Lorania Hopkins the instant Shuey
was gone. She presented herself breathless, a little to the
embarrassment of Lorania, who was sitting with her niece before a large
box of cracker-jack.

"It's a new kind of candy; I was just _tasting_ it, Maggie," faltered
she, while the niece, a girl of nineteen, with the inhu