Toffee turns the trick
before...." His eyes widened. "Oh, my gosh! How long have I been out? Old man Wheeler may walk in here any moment! He mustn't see you!"

"Who's Wheeler?" Toffee asked.

"A client. He's about sixty-eight and as...."

"I'll leave," Toffee said. "When they get past sixty I begin to lose interest ... and patience."

Marc took her by the arm and started her across the room. "You can take the rear door," he said. "It leads to the hallway and.... Stop twitching your hips like that. When you get outside...."

He stopped and made a small whining noise.

It was as though the ceiling had suddenly come crashing down around his head. For a moment he was numb all over. Then he could feel himself sinking toward the floor, but he wasn't falling. The sensation was alarmingly strange and disagreeable.

"What the devil's...!"

He stopped again; his voice was echoing back to him in an unfamiliar falsetto. The words were his but the voice definitely was not. He started back in alarm, tripped over something and sat down heavily on the floor. It was then that he glanced up and saw Toffee. For a moment he was certain he was losing his mind.

Instead of the well-curved, half-clad redhead he had last seen, he was now confronted by a chunky little moppet of about eight. Her heretofore inadequate tunic now covered her completely, part of it even trailing on the floor. He opened his mouth to speak but gave it up as Toffee expressed his emotions for him with a shrill scream of dismay. Apparently unmindful of her sudden transformation, however, she was staring at him with horror.

"You've shrunk!" she cried. "You've ... you've shriveled!"

Her voice, also, had moved up an octave or so.

Marc quickly turned his attention to his own person and found to his complete stupefaction that Toffee spoke the truth. Indeed he had shrunk like a ten-dollar suit in a cloudburst. What he had tripped over had been his own trouser legs, the spare yardage of which was wadded loosely about his ankles.

"Those pills!" he yelped. "Good grief! They've not only stopped my age, they've backed it up!"

Toffee giggled a little hysterically. "You look so funny!" she tittered. "Your ears are so big. And ... and 
 Prev. P 8/54 next 
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