in some such way we began our talking.



He talked about various things and came round to games. And thence

to my figure and complexion. "YOU ought to be a good cricketer,"

he said. I suppose I am slender, slender to what some people would

call lean, and I suppose I am rather dark, still--I am not ashamed

of having a Hindu great-grandmother, but, for all that, I don't want

casual strangers to see through me at a glance to HER. So that

I was set against Pyecraft from the beginning.



But he only talked about me in order to get to himself.



"I expect," he said, "you take no more exercise than I do, and

probably you eat no less." (Like all excessively obese people

he fancied he ate nothing.) "Yet,"--and he smiled an oblique smile--

"we differ."



And then he began to talk about his fatness and his fatness;

all he did for his fatness and all he was going to do for his fatness;

what people had advised him to do for his fatness and what he had

heard of people doing for fatness similar to his. "A priori," he said,

"one would think a question of nutrition could be answered by dietary

and a question of assimilation by drugs." It was stifling. It was

dumpling talk. It made me feel swelled to hear him.



One stands that sort of thing once in a way at a club, but a time

came when I fancied I was standing too much. He took to me altogether

too conspicuously. I could never go into the smoking-room but

he would come wallowing towards me, and sometimes he came and

gormandised round and about me while I had my lunch. He seemed

at times almost to be clinging to me. He was a bore, but not so

fearful a bore as to be limited to me; and from the first there

was something in his manner--almost as though he knew, almost as

though he penetrated to the fact that I MIGHT--that there was a remote,

exceptional chance in me that no one else presented.



"I'd give anything to get it down," he would say--"anything,"

and peer at me over his vast cheeks and pant.



Poor old Pyecraft! He has just gonged, no doubt to order another

buttered tea-cake!



He came to the actual thing one day. "Our Pharmacopoeia," he said,

"our Western Pharmacopoeia, is anything but the last word of medical

science. In the East, I've been told--"



He stopped and stared at me. It was like being at an aquarium.



I was quite suddenly angry with him. "Look here," I said, "who told

you about my great-grandmother's recipes?"



<< previous page | next page >>

Jump to page: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55 | 56 | 57 | 58 | 59 | 60 | 61 | 62 | 63 | 64 | 65 | 66 | 67 | 68 | 69 | 70 | 71 | 72 | 73 | 74 | 75 | 76 | 77 | 78 | 79 | 80 | 81 | 82 | 83 | 84 | 85 | 86 | 87 | 88 | 89 | 90 | 91 | 92 | 93 | 94 | 95 | 96 | 97 | 98 | 99 | 100 | 101 | 102 | 103 | 104 | 105 | 106 | 107 | 108 | 109 | 110 | 111 | 112 | 113 | 114 | 115 | 116 | 117 | 118 | 119 | 120 | 121 | 122 | 123 | 124 | 125 | 126 | 127 | 128 | 129 | 130 | 131 | 132 | 133 | 134 | 135 | 136 | 137 | 138 | 139 | 140 | 141 | 142 | 143 | 144 | 145 | 146 | 147 | 148 | 149 | 150 | 151 | 152 | 153 | 154 | 155 | 156 | 157 | 158 | 159 | 160 | 161 |