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.

"Once more," he would say. "Pick up your feet, sir! Pick up your
feet!"

And Jim would stagger doggedly past me, where I sat on the
parapet, his poor cheeks shaking and the tail of his bath robe
wrapping itself around his legs. Yes, he ran in the bath robe in
deference to me. It seems there isn't much to a running suit.

"Head up," Flannigan would say. "Lift your knees, sir. Didn't you
ever see a horse with string halt?"

He let him stop finally, and gave him a moment to get his breath.
Then he set him to turning somersaults. They spread the cushions
from the couch in the tent on the roof, and Jim would poke his
head down and say a prayer, and then curve over as gracefully as
a sausage and come up gasping, as if he had been pushed off a
boat.

"Five pounds a day; not less, sir," Flannigan said encouragingly.
"You'll drop it in chunks."

Jim looked at the tin as if he expected to see the chunks lying
at his feet.