He entered Kelly's room with great dignity. Taking a position in the
center, he raised his arms horizontally, inhaled a deep breath, bowed
deeply, straightened up, exhaled, rose on his toes, descended, and
dropped his arms.
The massive Kelly viewed this athletic exhibition with interest.
"What's that exercise for?" he demanded.
Mr. Jones yawned. "It gives me relaxation from the strain," he answered.
"What strain? Where did you strain yourself?" asked Kelly with kindly
interest in his friend's welfare.
"The office responsibility," explained the stenographer. "It knocks
the sap out of a fellow." He lighted a cigarette.
"Oh, is that it?" Kelly gave a cruel laugh. "I thought you had sprung
something. If you do that exercise often, young fellow, you'll bust a
lung. Let's see you do it again," urged the bookkeeper, as if desirous
of witnessing the fulfillment of his prophecy.
Without fear, Mr. Jones laid aside his cigarette with care, and gulped
such a deep draught of air that he became red in the face and gave other
evidences of being about to burst from undue pneumatic pressure.
Kelly viewed with undisguised amusement the undeveloped protuberance
thrust forward in pride by the stenographer. "You haven't the chest
expansion of a lizard," he told him.
Mr. Jones received this deadly insult in the midst of deep bowing. He
exploded, and, leaning against a desk, breathed rapidly while the injured
look in his eyes attempted to carry that reproof which his speechlessness
otherwise forbade.
"If you do that exercise much," Kelly gloomily predicted, "you are
going to relax in a wooden box. Who gave you that stuff? You must have
been getting your ideas from the gymnasium of a bug house."
For obvious reasons Mr. Jones failed to reply.
"There is no sense in the thing. What you need is--" Kelly descended
from his perch and seizing him, only that instant recovered from
speechlessness, in his strong grasp, made exploratory investigations
with his fingers throughout the panting one's anatomy.
"Ouch," wailed the pained Mr. Jones.
"Shut up. Do you want the old man out here? I'm not going to hurt you.
I want to find out what ails you."
"Leggo, you are nearly killing me."
Mr. Jones rubbed himself ruefully when Kelly loosed him. "You big stiff,
ain't you got no sense, gouging around in a fellow's insides that way?
You are liable to put a man out of business," he protested.
Utterly indifferent to these complaints, Kelly was judging the
stenographer coldly and dispassionately. "You've got no bone.
You've got no muscle. You've got no fat." Kelly forgot that pride and
dignity are intangible assets. "You'd better take correct breathing
exercises or you'll get T. B.," he told him. "I shouldn't be
surprised if you've got it now."
Naturally, Mr. Jones was greatly alarmed and showed it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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