The Luncheon
Twenty-one stone
Explain the ending and how the writer laughs at himself.
As they part, she advises him again to eat only one thing for lunch. He replies that he will eat nothing for dinner tonight. She laughs and calls him a humorist.
She thinks he is joking; the reader knows he is telling the truth: he cannot afford dinner.
The story ends with a twist. The writer says he is not a vindictive (revengeful) man, but fate has given him his revenge: the lady now weighs twenty-one stone (about 133 kilograms).
The story is told in the first person, by the writer himself. So we hear his polite words to the lady and his secret panic at the same time, and the contrast between them is what makes the story funny.
He laughs at himself, too: too young to say no, inventing a doctor's ban on champagne, and eating his 'one miserable little chop' while she feasts.
The gods, not the writer, take revenge on the greedy guest.
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