Part 36 (1/2)

By-and-by I went into the other room to see if I had overlooked anything. I found on the floor a chart of exercises, and returned triumphantly with it.

There were thirty exercises altogether, and the chart gave you:

(1) A detailed explanation of how to do each particular exercise;

(2) A photograph of a lady doing it.

”After all,” I rea.s.sured myself, after the first bashful glance, ”it is Adela who has thrust this upon me; and she must have known.” So I studied it.

Nos. 10, 15 and 28 seemed the easiest; I decided to confine myself to them. For the first of these you strap yourself in at the waist, grasp the handles, and fall slowly backwards until your head touches the floor--all the elastic cords being then at full stretch. When I had got very slowly halfway down, an extra piece of elastic which had got hitched somewhere came suddenly into play, and I did the rest of the journey without a stop, finis.h.i.+ng up sharply against the towel-horse.

The chart had said, ”Inhale going down,” and I was inhaling hard at the moment that the towel-horse and two damp towels spread themselves over my face.

”So much for Exercise 10,” I thought, as I got up. ”I'll just get the idea to-night, and then start properly to-morrow. Now for No. 15.”

Somehow I felt instinctively that No. 15 would cause trouble. For No. 15 you stand on the right foot, fasten the left foot to one of the cords, and stretch it out as far as you can....

What--officially--you do then, I cannot say....

Some people can stand easily upon the right foot when the left is fastened to the wall ... others cannot.... It is a gift....

Having recovered from my spontaneous rendering of No. 15 I turned to No.

28. This one, I realised, was extremely important. I would do it twelve times.

You begin by lying flat on the floor roped in at the waist, and with your hands (grasping the elastic cords) held straight up in the air. The tension on your waist is then extreme but on your hands only moderate.

Then taking a deep breath you pull your arms slowly out until they lie along the floor. The tension becomes terrific, the strain on every part of you is immense. While I lay there, taking a deep breath before relaxing, I said to myself, ”The strain will be too much for me.” I was wrong. It was too much for the hook. The hook whizzed out, everything flew at me at once, and I remembered no more....

As I limped into bed, I trod heavily upon something sharp. I shrieked and bent down to see what had bitten me. It was a tin plate bearing the word ”LADIES.”

”Well?” said Adela a week later.

I looked at her for a long time. ”When did you last use the Hyperion?” I asked.

”About a year ago.”

”Ah!... You don't remember the chart that went with it?”

”Not well. Except, of course, that each exercise was arranged for a particular object, according to what you wanted.”

”Exactly. So I discovered yesterday. It was in very small type, and I missed it at first.”

”Well, how many did you do?”

”I limited myself to exercises 10, 15 and 28. Do you happen to remember what those are for?”

”Not particularly.”