"I can't help it," I gulped in my sleeve. "I did use to like Alfred
Bennett. My heart almost broke when he went away. I used to be beautiful
and slim, and now I feel as if my own fat ghost has come to haunt me all
my life. I am so ashamed! If a woman can't cry over her own dead beauty,
what can she cry over?" By this time I was really crying.

Then what happened to me was that Dr. John took me by the shoulders and
gave me one good shake.

"You foolish child," he said in the deepest voice I almost ever heard
him use. "You are just a lovely perfect flower, but if you will be
happier to have Alfred Bennett come and find you as slim as a scarlet
runner, I can show you how to do it. Will you do just as I tell you?"

"Yes, I will," I sniffed in a comforted voice. What woman wouldn't be
comforted by being called a "perfect flower"? I looked out between my
fingers to see what more he was going to say, but he had turned to a
shelf and taken down two books.

"Now," he said in his most businesslike voice, as cool as a bucket of
water fresh from the spring, "it is no trouble at all to take off your
surplus avoirdupois at the rate of two and a half pounds a week if you
follow these directions. As I take it, you are about twenty-five pounds
over your normal weight. It will take over two months to reduce you,
and we will allow an extra month for further beautifying, so that when
Mr. Bennett arrives he will find the lady of his adoration in proper trim
to be adored. Yes, just be still until I write these directions in this
little red leather blank-book for you, and every day I want you to keep
an exact record of the conditions of which I make note. No, don't talk
while I make out these diet lists! I wish you would go upstairs and see