a jealous lot and as hard to manage as rival prima donnas,
and these two monstrosities came to hate each other like poison. They
were in different lines, but you may have noticed that the side show
'professor' uses up most of the superlatives in the English language
when he gives his lecture, and each of 'em seemed afraid that the other
would get some of his share of the dictionary. Adipose used to look at
Jake's coiled body as if he would like to sit on it and flatten it out,
and the snake would return the glance with a naughty little twinkle in
its eye, as if he was estimating how much it would have to stretch its
skin to accommodate A. A. in its interior, until it made Merritt anxious
about 'em.

"'That blame fat fool will waste away and spoil his shape, if he don't
stop worrying,' he says, and he cuts a lot of his talk out of the
description of the snake and uses the words on Adipose. Maybe you think
snakes are stupid, but they aren't, and the boa got the hump and refused
to uncoil himself to show his length unless he got his full share of the
spiel. It cheered Avoirdupois up, though, and when we moved to the next
town he stood around to gloat over Jake when he was being moved from the
traveling box to the exhibition cage. The snake hadn't been fed for ten
days and he was good and lively as well as being out of temper, so when
he caught sight of the Signor he scattered the boys with one flip of his
tail and went for him.

"I've heard of bear hugs, but I never saw such a squeezing as that boa
gave poor Adipose. It was a long way around him, but the snake made
about a dozen wraps and all we could see of the fat man was a pair of
feet sticking out at one end of the coil and his face, which looked like
a purple harvest moon, projecting from the other. Jake reaches out and
gets hold of a tent peg with his tail, which gives him a purchase, and
then he tightens up for fair and Adipose lets out a holler you could
hear a mile.

"Of course, we got busy with crowbars and jackscrews and tried to pry
Jake off, but there was nothing doing and the harder we pried the closer
he cinched up on Adipose. Merritt usually had a suggestion to make, so I
looked at him and he was lost in thought, but in a minute he brightens
up and calls for a rope.

"'We can't pry the blame snake away from the man,' says he, as he tied
the rope around the Signor's feet, 'so we'll try to pull the man away
from the snake.' All hands fell to and pulled t