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.