But it seemed as if Fate had put me down in her black books, for really and truly that John Duffy couldn’t have been in the house above a month, before he got _so_ gross and _so_ fat, and did make flesh _so_ fast, that I’m sure it would have required nothing short of a suit of vulcanized india-rubber to have kept pace with him. As for asking him to pick up anything, bless you! I no more dared to do it than--than I don’t know what; for as sure as the porpoise stooped for anything, bang! would go either the strings of his waistcoat or else crack! would fly all the beautiful silver buttons off the knees of his--a--of his thing-me-jigs, (dear me, I shall forget my own name next.) When that monkey of a Wittals was with me, he nearly drove me out of my mind by growing upwards, but that pig of a Duffy fairly sent me stark staring mad, by growing sideways--drat him! Wittals, to have looked any way decent, wanted trousers made to pull out like telescopes; but that abominable Duffy, in order to have been kept merely respectable, must have had a coat and waistcoat made to expand like an accordion. If Wittals’s mulberry pantaloons required a tuck to be let out at the bottom at least once a month, I’m sure that Duffy’s canary vest needed another gore to be let in at the back quite as often. Really, the sixth week after the great whale had been in my kitchen, if he hadn’t grown nearly five waistcoat buttons stouter upon the good things out of my larder, and, before two months were over my head, if I hadn’t to put in behind a great wedge of shalloon--in the shape of a large sippet, to get it to meet anyhow. The way in which the man’s chin, too, kept on increasing was positively frightful for a thrifty housewife to behold. Chin upon chin, did I see grow under my very eyes, until at last they bulged out over his neckcloth, for all the world like half a mellon. And no wonder! for the quantity that man would eat was positively as if he was going into training for an apoplexy; and it wasn’t quantity alone he wanted, but, bless me! quality as well! As for cold meat, over and over again, have I seen him trying to turn his nose up at it; but, unfortunately for him, it was a snub, and do what he would, he couldn’t turn it up any higher. But, though Mr. Duffy objected to cold meat for dinner, yet he could manage to make away with a pound or two of it for his breakfast and supper. And, mercy-on-me! even the common household bread wasn’t good enough for his royal highness’s delicate stomach! Oh, no! he must needs go pampering himself with the digestive cottages I had expressly for myself of a morning. As for good wholesome salt butter, too, at one-and-one, I declare he wouldn’t so much as soil his mouth with it; not he! but he’d wait till our butter-dish came down, and then _wouldn’t_ he fall to at our fresh at one-and-eight, and spread it on a large bit of my digestive cottage--yes! as thick as stucco!