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'If that's a clip, I'll eat my plate,' Jones would say.

'Eat your plate,' Coach Bob would say.

'What's a "clip"?' the famous Finnish doctor would ask, only it sounded like 'Wot's a clop?'

Iowa Bob would then offer to demonstrate a clip, on Ronda, who was willing, and the Korean girls giggled shyly to themselves, and the Japanese struggled -- with his turkey, with his butter knife, with Frank's mumbling explanations, with Egg's shouts of 'What!' all the time, with (apparently) everything.

'This is the loudest dinner I've ever eaten,' Franny said.

'What?' Egg cried.

'Jesus God,' said Father.

'Lilly,' Mother said. 'Please eat. Then you'll grow.'

'What's that?' said the famous Finnish doctor, only it sounded like 'Wot's dot?' He looked at Mother and Lilly. 'Who's not growing?' he asked.

'Oh, it's nothing,' Mother said.

'It's me,' said Lilly. 'I've stopped growing.'

'No you haven't, dear,' Mother said.

'Her growth appears to be arrested,' Father said.

'Ho, arrested!' the Finn said, staring at Lilly. 'Not growing, eh?' he asked her. She nodded in her small way. The doctor put his hands on her head and peered into her eyes. Everyone stopped eating, except the Japanese boy and the Korean girls.

'How do you say?' the doctor asked, and then said something unpronounceable to his daughter.

'Tape measure,' she said.

'Ho, a tape measure?' the doctor cried. Max Urick ran and got one. The doctor measured Lilly around her chest, around her waist, around her wrists and ankles, around her shoulders, around her head.

'She's all right,' Father said. 'It's nothing.'

'Be quiet,' Mother said.

The doctor wrote down all the figures.

'Ho!' he said.

'Eat up your food, dear,' Mother told Lilly, but Lilly was staring at the figures the doctor had written on his napkin.

'How do you say?' the doctor asked his daughter, and said another unpronounceable word. This time the daughter drew a blank. 'You don't know?' her father asked her. She shook her head. 'Where's the dictionary?' he asked her.

'In my dorm,' she said.

'Ho!' he said. 'Go and get it.'

'Now?' she said, and looked wistfully at her second serving of goose and turkey and stuffing, heaped upon her plate.

'Go, go!' her father said. 'Of course now. Go! Ho! Go!' he said, and the big blue-and-white ski-sweater girl was gone.

'It's -- how you say? -- a pathological condition,' the famous Finnish doctor said, calmly.

'A pathological condition?' Father said.

'A pathological condition of arrested growth,' said the doctor. 'It's common, and there's a variety of causes.'