“You’d look a sight better if you were stuffed, too.”
That brought down the house and Professor Salvatori knew that he had won the crowd over. He beamed upon his chagrined friends benevolently and went on. He narrated several marvelous tales of his adventures with large snakes in Africa, the province of Farina land. And then Dewey was promptly reminded of one of his yarns, b’gee! which he told in his inimitable way and made everybody laugh.
Then they moved on to the Siamese twins.
“He’s dead, too,” observed Mark. “He died in jail, poor fellow. He’d committed a crime one-half of him, and it was quite a problem how to keep in jail without keeping the other one in too. He had committed a horrible crime——”
“What was it?” cried Indian, innocently.
“Bigamy,” said Mark, calmly. “He’d been leading a double life.”
By this time things were progressing with delightful smoothness. The crowd was in good humor, laughing at everything. When you once get people in a laughing mood they do that. Mr.—er—General Smithers was beaming serenely, thinking of offering a permanent job to these two quick-witted unfortunates.
And in the meantime they were still talking.
“And now we come to the India-rubber man,” said Mark. “A little of this India-rubber man goes a very long way, and therefore I shall move on to this next curious and most interesting specimen, the man with the iron jaw. He is indeed worthy of notice.”
Texas and his mischievous friends ventured yet one more effort then.