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."

"Sam-u-el!" again came the cry from the fat woman, "are you never coming
in?"

"Not yet, my angel," said the skeleton, placidly, as he crossed one thin
leg over the other and looked calmly at her. "Come here an' see Job's
new boy."

"Your imprudence is wearin' me away so that I sha'n't be worth five
dollars a week to any circus," she said, impatiently, at the same time
coming toward the candy stand quite as rapidly as her very great size
would admit.

"This is my wife Lilly--Mrs. Treat," said the skeleton, with a proud
wave of his hand, as he rose from his seat and gazed admiringly at her.
"This is my flower--my queen, Mr.--Mr.--"

"Tyler," said Toby, supplying the name which the skeleton--or Mr. Treat,
as Toby now learned his name was--did not know; "Tyler is my name--Toby
Tyler."

"Why, what a little chap you are!" said Mrs. Treat, paying no attention
to the awkward little bend of the head which Toby intended for a bow.
"How small he is, Samuel!"

"Yes," said the skeleton, reflectively, as he looked Toby over from head
to foot, as if he were mentally trying to calculate exactly how many
inches high he was, "he is small; but he's got all the world before him
to grow in, an' if he only eats enough--There, that reminds me. Job
isn't going to give him any supper, because he didn't work hard enough."

"He won't, won't he?" exclaimed the large lady, savagely. "Oh, he's a
precious one, he is; an' some day I shall just give him a good
shakin'-up, that's what I'll do. I get all out of patience with that
man's ugliness."

"An' she'll do just what she says," said the skeleton to Toby, with an
admiring shake of the head. "That woman hain't afraid of anybody, an' I
wouldn't be a bit surprised if she did give Job a pretty rough time."

Toby thought, as he looked at her, that she was large enough to give
'most any one a pretty rough time, but he did not venture to say so.
While he was looking first at her, and then at her very thin husband,
the skeleton told his wife the little that he had learned regarding the
boy's history; and when