This satisfied the skeleton that this Mr. Stubbs must be some one attached to the show, and he asked,
"Has Job been whipping you?"
"No; Ben, the driver on the cart where I ride, told him not to do that again; but he hain't going to let me have any supper, 'cause I was so slow about my work, though I wasn't slow; I only talked to Mr. Stubbs when there wasn't anybody round his cage."
"Sam! Sam! Sam-u-el!"
This name, which was shouted twice in a quick, loud voice, and the third time in a slow manner, ending almost in a screech, did not come from either Toby or the skeleton, but from an enormously large woman, dressed in a gaudy red and black dress, cut very short, and with low neck and an apology for sleeves, who had just come out from the tent whereon the picture of the Living Skeleton hung.
"Samuel," she screamed again, "come inside this minute, or you'll catch your death o' cold, an' I shall have you wheezin' around with the phthisic all night. Come in, Sam-u-el."
"That's her," said the skeleton to Toby, as he pointed his thumb in the direction of the fat woman, but paid no attention to the outcry she was making—"that's my wife Lilly, an' she's the fat woman of the show. She's always yellin' after me that way the minute I get out for a little fresh air, an' she's always sayin' just the same thing. Bless you, I never have the phthisic, but she does awful; an' I s'pose 'cause she's so large she can't feel all over her, an' thinks it's me that has it."
"Is—is all that—is that your wife?" stammered Toby, in astonishment, as he looked at the enormously fat woman who stood in the tent door, and then at the wonderfully thin man who sat beside him.
"Yes, that's her," said the skeleton. "She weighs pretty nigh four hundred, though of course the show cards says it's over six hundred, an' she earns almost as much money as I do. Of course she can't get so much, for skeletons is much scarcer than fat folks; but we make a pretty good thing travellin' together."