"Honest, she is fat," said Lloyd. "She has to ride in a cart by her lone. But she is a very nice lydy—high-toned. I feel sorry for her."
"Why?" asked the girl, unexpectedly.
Lloyd glanced up doubtfully at her from his lowly posture, then slowly rose to his feet.
"Well," he said, turning his head thoughtfully to one side, as if to scrutinise his impressions, "I always was sorry for freaks. They are always in demand, and they generally earn a handsome salary, but money ain't everything—money can't make people happy."
He stopped short, reflecting that a comparatively small amount would add very materially to his prospect of felicity.
Once more he had a shuddering sense of a venerable claw laid on his arm. The old woman was at his side. "Stranger," she said mysteriously, "ef anybody in town axes you ef we uns make money up hyar on the mounting you kin jes' sw'ar ez ye knows 'tain't true. We uns ain't got nuthin' ter make money with."
Lloyd gazed in amazement at her—then around at the humble place with every evidence of poverty, and to his mind, discomfort. But he could not with civility acquiesce in her statement and he hesitated.
"Mam," her son plained, "ye air wuss than pore, ye air plumb deranged. This hyar man air a showman."
"And I want you, sir, for a freak!" Lloyd declared rudely. "Allow me, lydy, to present you with some free tickets for the show, for yourself and these other two lydies. These will be good for any day and the whole biz, if you can come down to Colbury one day this week." He was shuffling the little blue and red cards in his hands, his instinct being to include the entire family, but a recollection of the acrid remonstrances of "Captain Ollory of the Royal Navy" on the occasion of similar generosities, stayed his hand.
"Naw, sir, naw sir! nare one," the head of the family had found his ordinary sonorous voice. "We may be pore, ez Mam says, but we pay ez we go. We kin tote our end of the log. We'll attend the show—but we ain't wantin' nobody ter gin us a treat."