We agreed to talk it over with the Fat Lady in that show, who had a good deal of experience in concerns of the heart and she had been married four or five times and was now a widder, having accidental killed her last husband by rolling over on him in her sleep. She says to me:
“How happy you could be with either, Skinny, were t'other dear charmer away!”
“This ain't no jokin' matter, Dolly,” I tells her. “We come for serious advice.”
“Skinny, you old fool,” she says, “there's an easy way out of this difficulty. All you got to do is get a surgeon to cut that ligament and then take your choice.”
“But I ain't really got any choice,” I says, “for I loves 'em both and I loves 'em equal. And I don't believe in tamperin' with Nature.”
“It ain't legal for you to marry both of 'em,” says the Fat Lady.
“It ain't moral for me to cut 'em asunder,” I says.
I had a feelin' all along that if they was cut asunder trouble of some kind would follow. But both Hetty and Netty was strong for it. They refused to see me or have anything to do with me, they sent me word, till I give up what they called the insultin' idea of marryin' both of 'em. They set and quarrelled with each other all the time, the Fat Lady told me, because they was jealous of each other. Bein' where they couldn't get away from each other even for a minute, that jealousy must have et into them something unusual. And finally, I knuckled under. I let myself be overrulled. I seen I would lose both of 'em unless I made a choice. So I sent 'em word by the Fat Lady that I would choose. But I knowed deep in my heart all the time that no good would come of it. You can't go against Scripter and prosper; and the Scripter says: “What God has joined together, let no man put asunder.”
Well, we fixed it up this way: I was to pay for that there operation, having money saved up for to do it with, and then I was to make my choice by chance. The Fat Lady says to toss a penny or something.
But I always been a kind of a romantic feller, and I says to myself I will make that choice in some kind of a romantic way. So first I tried one of these ouija boards, but all I get is “Etty, Etty, Etty,” over and over again, and whether the ouija left off an H or an N there's no way of telling. The Fat Lady, she says: “Why don't you count 'em out, like kids do, to find out who is It?”