While Aunt Selina was busy with the time Jim had swallowed an open

safety pin, and just as the pin had been coughed up, or taken out of

his nose--I forget which--Jim himself appeared and sulkily demanded the

privacy of the roof for his training hour.

Yes, he was training. Flannigan claimed to know the system that had

reduced the president to what he is, and he and Jim had a seance every

day which left Jim feeling himself for bruises all evening. He claimed

to be losing flesh; he said he could actually feel it going, and he and

Flannigan had spent an entire afternoon in the cellar three days before

with a potato barrel, a cane-seated chair and a lamp.

The whole thing had been shrouded in mystery. They sandpapered the

inside of the barrel and took out all the nails, and when they had

finished they carried it to the roof and put it in a corner behind the

tent. Everybody was curious, but Flannigan refused any information about

it, and merely said it was part of his system. Dal said that if HE had

anything like that in his system he certainly would be glad to get rid

of it.

At a quarter to six Jim appeared, still sullen from the events of the

afternoon and wearing a dressing gown and a pair of slippers, Flannigan

following him with a sponge, a bucket of water and an armful of bath

towels. Everybody protested at having to move, but he was firm, and they

all filed down the stairs. I was the last, with Aunt Selina just ahead

of me. At the top of the stairs, she turned around suddenly to me.

"That policeman looks cruel," she said. "What's more, he's been in a

bad humor all day. More than likely he'll put James flat on the roof

and tramp on him, under pretense of training him. All policemen are

inhuman."

"He only rolls him over a barrel or something like that," I protested.

"James had a bump like an egg over his ear last night," Aunt Selina

insisted, glaring at Flannigan's unconscious back. "I don't think it's

safe to leave him. It is my time to relax for thirty minutes, or I

would watch him. You will have to stay," she said, fixing me with her

imperious eyes.

So I stayed. Jim didn't want me, and Flannigan muttered mutiny. But

it was easier to obey Aunt Selina than to clash with her, and anyhow I

wanted to see the barrel in use.

I never saw any one train before. It is not a joyful spectacle. First,

Flannigan made Jim run, around and around the roof. He said it stirred

up his food and brought it in contact with his liver, to be digested.

Flannigan, from meekness and submission, of a sort, in the kitchen,

became an autocrat on the roof.




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