"In about ten minutes, though, I'm struck by the fact that Emily's original outburst of enthusiasm appears slightly on the wane. It seems to me she ain't reaching out for the free-will offerings with quite so much eagersomeness as she was displaying a spell back. Also I takes notice that the wrinkles in her tum-tum are filling out so that she's beginning to lose some of that deflated or punctured look so common amongst bulls.
"Still, I don't have no apprehensions, but thinks to myself that any bull which can eat half a ton of hay for breakfast certainly is competent to take in a couple of wagon-loads of peanuts for five o'clock tea. Even at that I figgers that it won't do no harm to coach Emily along a little.
"'Go to it, baby mine,' I says to her. 'You ain't hardly started. Here's a chance,' I says, 'to establish a new world's record for peanuts.'
"That remark appears to spur her up for a minute or so, but something seems to keep on warning me that her heart ain't in the work to the extent it has been. Windy don't see nothing out of the way, he being congenially engaged in shooting off his face, but I'm more or less concerned by certain mighty significant facts. For one thing, Emily ain't eatin' sacks and all any more; she's emptying the peanuts out and throwing the paper bags aside. Likewise her work ain't clean and smooth like it was. Her underlip is swinging down, and she's beginning to drool loose goobers off the lower end of it, and her low but intelligent forehead is all furrowed up as if with deep thought.
"Observing all of which, I says to myself, I says: 'If ever Emily should start to cramp, the world's cramping record is also in a fair way to be busted this afternoon. I certainly do hope,' I says, 'that Emily don't go and get herself overextended.'
"You see, I'm trusting for the best, because I realises that it wouldn't do to call off the reception right in the middle of it on account of the disappointment amongst the tiny tots that ain't passed in review yet and the general ill-feeling that's sure to follow.
"I should say about two hundred tiny tots have gone by, with maybe five hundred more still in line waiting their turn, when there halts in front of Emily a fancy-dressed tiny tot which he must've been the favourite tiny tot of the richest man in town, because he's holding in his hands a bag of peanuts fully a foot deep. It couldn't of cost a cent less'n half a dollar, that bag. Emily reaches for the contribution, fondles it for a second or two and starts to upend it down her throat; and then with a low, sad, hopeless cry she drops it on the stage and sort of shrugs her front legs forward and stands there with her head bent and her ears twitching same as if she's listening for something that's still a long ways off but coming closter fast. And at that precise instant I sees the first cramp start from behind her right-hand shoulder-blade and begin to work south. Say, it was just like being present at the birth of an earthquake.
"Moving slow and deliberate, Emily turns around in her tracks, shivering all over, and then I sees the cramp ripple along until it reaches her cargo-hold and strikes inward. It lifts all four of her feet clean off the floor, and when she comes down again, she comes down travelling. There's some scenery in her way, and some furniture and props and one thing and other, but she don't trouble to go round 'em. She goes through 'em, as being a more simple and direct way, and a minute later she steps out through the stage entrance into the crowded marts of trade with half of a centre door fancy hung around her neck. Me and Windy is trailing along, urging her to be ca'm but keeping at a reasonably safe distance while doing so. Behind us as we comes forth we can hear the voices of many tiny tots upraised in skeered cries.
"Being a Saturday afternoon, the business section is fairly well crowded with people, and I suppose it's only natural that the unexpected appearance upon the main street of the largest bull in captivity, wearing part of a cottage set for a collar and making sounds through her snout like a switch-engine in distress, should cause some surprised comment amongst the populace. In fact, I should say the surprised comment might of been heard for fully half a mile away.
"Emily hesitates as she reaches the sidewalk, as though she ain't decided yet in her own mind just where she'll go, and then her agonised eye falls on all them peanut-roasters standing in a double row alongside the curbings on both sides of the street. The Italian and Greek gents who owns 'em are already departing hence in a hurried manner, but they've left their outfits behind, and right away it's made plain to me by her actions that Emily regards the sight as a part of a general conspiracy to feed her some peanuts when she already has more peanuts than what she really required for personal use. She reaches out for the first peanut-machine in the row, curls her trunk around it and slams it against a brick wall so hard that it immediately begins to look something like a flivver car which has been in a severe collision and something like a tin accordion that's had hard treatment from a careless owner. With this for a beginning, Emily starts in to get real rough with them roasters. For about three minutes it's rainin' hot charcoal and hot peanuts and wooden wheels and metal cranks and sheet-iron drums all over that part of the fair city.