There was a sort
of foppish weakness in his face. And indeed his going seemed to have
worked her no hardship, nor to have left any incurable sting of loss.
Three cups of the almost perfect tea I drank, as we talked of her own
simple affairs and of the town at large, and at length of her child
who awakened noisily from slumber in an adjacent room and came
voraciously to partake of food. It was a male child of some two and a
half years, rather suggesting the generous good-nature of the mother,
but in the most shocking condition, a thing I should have spoken
strongly to her about at once had I known her better. Queer it seemed
to me that a woman of her apparently sound judgment should let her
offspring reach this terrible state without some effort to alleviate
it. The poor thing, to be blunt, was grossly corpulent, legs, arms,
body, and face being wretchedly fat, and yet she now fed it a large
slice of bread thickly spread with butter and loaded to overflowing
with the fattening sweet. Banting of the strictest sort was of course
what it needed. I have had but the slightest experience with children,
but there could be no doubt of this if its figure was to be
maintained. Its waistline was quite impossible, and its eyes, as it
owlishly scrutinized me over its superfluous food, showed from a face
already quite as puffy as the Honourable George's.
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