She placed this in front of Toby, and as she did so she handed him two pictures.
"There, little Toby Tyler," she said—"there's something for you to eat, if Mr. Job Lord and his precious partner Jacobs did say you shouldn't have any supper; an' I've brought you a picture of Samuel an' me. We sell 'em for ten cents apiece, but I'm going to give them to you, because I like the looks of you."
Toby was quite overcome with the presents, and seemed at a loss how to thank her for them. He attempted to speak, couldn't get the words out at first, and then he said, as he put the two photographs in the same pocket with his money: "You're awful good to me, an' when I get to be a man I'll give you lots of things. I wasn't so very hungry, if I am such a big eater, but I did want something."
"Bless your dear little heart, and you shall have something to eat," said the fat woman, as she seized Toby, squeezed him close up to her, and kissed his freckled face as kindly as if it had been as fair and white as possible. "You shall eat all you want to, an' if you get the stomach-ache, as Samuel does sometimes when he's been eatin' too much, I'll give you some catnip tea out of the same dipper that I give him his. He's a great eater, Samuel is," she added, in a burst of confidence, "an' it's a wonder to me what he does with it all sometimes."
"Is he?" exclaimed Toby, quickly. "How funny that is! for I'm an awful eater. Why, Uncle Dan'l used to say that I ate twice as much as I ought to, an' it never made me any bigger. I wonder what's the reason?"
"I declare I don't know," said the fat woman, thoughtfully, "an' I've wondered at it time an' time again. Some folks is made that way, an' some folks is made different. Now I don't eat enough to keep a chicken alive, an' yet I grow fatter an' fatter every day—don't I, Samuel?"
"Indeed you do, my love," said the skeleton, with a world of pride in his voice; "but you mustn't feel bad about it, for every pound you gain makes you worth just so much more to the show."
"Oh, I wasn't worryin'; I was only wonderin'; but we must go, Samuel, for the poor child won't eat a bit while we are here. After you've eaten what there is there, bring the plate in to me," she said to Toby, as she took her lean husband by the arm and walked him off toward their own tent.
Toby gazed after them a moment, and then he commenced a vigorous attack upon the eatables which had been so kindly given him. Of the food which he had taken from the dinner table he had eaten some while he was in the tent, and after that he had entirely forgotten that he had any in his pocket; therefore at the time that Mrs. Treat had brought him such a liberal supply he was really very hungry.
He succeeded in eating nearly all the food which had been brought to him, and the very small quantity which remained he readily found room for in his pockets. Then he washed the plate nicely, and seeing no one in sight, he thought he could leave the booth long enough to return the plate.