Page:Anthology of Modern Slavonic Literature in Prose and Verse by Paul Selver.djvu/63

Rh "You're working too hard."

"Fancy taking it out of yourself like that!"

Finally, on meeting him, they would sigh:

"Whatever is the matter with you?"

Behind his back, Saranin's acquaintances began to make fun of him.

"He's growing downwards."

"He's trying to break the record for smallness."

His wife noticed it somewhat later. Being always in her sight, he grew smaller too gradually for her to see anything. She noticed it by the baggy look of his clothes.

At first she laughed at the queer diminution in size of her husband. Then she began to lose her temper.

"This is going from bad to worse," she said. "And to think that I actually married such a midget."

Soon all his clothes had to be re-made,—all the old ones were dropping off him; his trousers reached his ears, and his hat fell on to his shoulder.

The head porter happened to go into the kitchen.

"What's up here?" he asked the cook, sternly.

"Is that any business of mine?" the plump and comely Matrena was on the point of shouting irascibly, but she remembered just in time and said:

Gougle