Every one went up on the roof and left him to his mystery. Anne
drank her tea in a preoccupied silence, with half-closed eyes, an
attitude that boded ill to somebody. The rest were feverishly
gay, and Aunt Selina, with a pair of arctics on her feet and a
hot-water bottle at her back, sat in the middle of the tent and
told me familiar anecdotes of Jimmy's early youth (had he known,
he would have slain her). Betty and Mr. Harbison had found a
medicine ball, and were running around like a pair of children.
It was quite certain that neither his escape from death nor my
accusation weighed heavily on him.

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