“But why should the management object, Miss—Mademoiselle?� asked Mr. Lanter, standing, very red and stiff and embarrassed, at Miss Minota’s knee, like a somewhat dull little boy about to say a lesson.
“Because once folks have seen me for nothin’, they’ll leave the pay-place alone,� said Miss Minota. “It’s human natur’, take it how you will. An’ I’m only Mademoiselle on the posters. My first professional exhibitin’ tour was in the State of Minnesota, an’ that’s how I got my professional name. My own name seemed kind of one-horse for a poster—Quilt—Miss Hattie Quilt of Smartsville, New Hampshire, I was when I lived to-home.�
“I’ve been to Smartsville,� said Mr. Lanter eagerly, as though it were a bond. “It’s only forty miles from Saunderstown where I was raised. My mother, Mrs. Lanter, she lives there now. And Quilt’s a name I’ve heard.... There was old Deacon Quilt that had the lawsuit——�
“I guess he was my grandfather!� said Miss Minota soberly.
Mr. Lanter tilted his head, trying to remember what the lawsuit had been about.
“It was a suit about an iron bedstead,� said Miss Minota. “It’s ’most ten years ago. Grandfather bought it for me, because I’d crowded mother out of hers. We slep’ together till I was ’bout eleven years old. Well, grandfather measured me himself for that bed, but it didn’t get delivered for a month on end, and I’d growed beyond my measure, and didn’t fit it, or it didn’t fit me. Mother tried to convince the old man by showin’ him my frocks—she’d let ’em down eight inches only four weeks back, an’ they was hardly on speakin’ terms with my boot-tops by then—but he said on’y Jonah’s gourd growed at that rate, an’ the dry-goods man must change the bedstead or he’d go to law. An’ the dry-goods man said rather than have legal trouble he’d change the bed for a bigger, ’n he did; but the new one was six weeks in gettin’ delivered, and it was the same story over again—it didn’t fit me, nohow! So grandfather went to law, an’ the case was tried in the Smartsville court-house, an’ grandfather would ’a got damages if the dry-goods man’s lawyer hadn’t asked to have me produced in court. It was my first public appearance, an’ I was dretful shy. People used to laugh at me bein’ so shy, but you’ve no idee what a tryin’ thing it is bein’ bigger ’n anybody else—when you first find it out!� The large form of Miss Minota was convulsed by a shudder. “You’d hide yourself in a mousehole, if it was big enough to hold you. Well, they called Miss Hattie Quilt, an’ I got up an’ straightened out, for I’d been settin’ cramped in a kind of pew, an’ it seemed even to myself as if I’d never end. An’ the judge looked at me through his glasses. My! didn’t he stare! An’ he asked how old I was, an’ I said ‘Risin’ twelve’; an’ the judge allowed if I kep’ on risin’ I might get somewheres in time; an’ that a man with a granddaughter like that growin’ up about him ought to provide india-rubber bedsteads an’ a sliding roof. An’ all the folks laughed an’ grandfather had to pay sixty dollars damages an’ costs.� Miss Minota’s gentle, monotonous, mooing voice left off talking; she paused to draw breath.
“And then——?� said Mr. Lanter, in whose brain dim and faded hearsays connected with the Quilt law-case were stirring.
“Then grandfather took a kind of down on me,� Miss Minota explained, “though he’d set a deal of store on me before. An’ mother used to beg me with tears in her eyes not to grow at that rate; an’ I tried not—hard; but I kep’ on. I stinted meals an’ wore an iron pound-weight on my head under my hat—but still I kep’ on. An’ at last grandfather opinioned to father and mother it was time to let out the house—or to let out me. So they hired me to Dan Slater—perhaps you’ve heard of Slater’s Traveling Museum of Marvels—an’——�
“I should have thought they’d been ashamed!� burst out Mr. Lanter, flushing to the temples. “Their own flesh and blood!�
“That’s what other people kep’ saying to grandfather, ‘your own flesh and blood’!� returned Miss Minota. “But all grandfather ever said was that there was more flesh and blood than he’d bargained for, and he’d thank ’em to ’tend to their own affairs.�