e a diplomatic talk with them about their condition,
'cause if this thing continued they would ruin the show.

So pa went to the office and sent for them, and I was there as a
witness, in case of trouble. The fat woman came in first, and there was
no chair big enough for her, so she sat down on a leather lounge, which
broke and let her down on the floor, and pa tried to help her up, but it
was like lifting a load of hay. So he leaned her against the wall and
said:

"Madame, the management has detailed me to censure you for losing flesh,
and I am instructed to say if you do not manage to take on about fifty
pounds more flesh before the show starts on the road, you don't go
along. What you want to do is to eat more starchy food and sleep more at
night. They tell me you go out nights to dances and drink high balls,
and this has got to stop. Drink beer and eat cheese sandwiches at night,
or it is all off. This show can't afford to take along no 400-pound
fairy for a fat woman when the contract calls for a 500-pound mountain
of flesh, see?" and pa looked just as stern as could be.

The fat woman began to cry and sob, so it sounded like an engine blowing
off steam, and she told pa that the cause of her losing flesh was that
she was in love with the living skeleton, and that he had been paying
attention to the bearded woman, and she would scratch her eyes out if
she could catch her. Just then the living skeleton came in, and when he
saw the fat woman sitting on the floor crying, and pa talking soothing
to her and telling her he could appreciate her condition, 'cause he had
been in love some hisself, the skeleton pushed pa away and tried to lift
it, and said: "What is the matter with my itty tootsy-wootsy, and what
has the bad old man with spinach on his chin been doing to you?"

Then he turned on pa and his legs began to shake and rattle like a pair
of bones in a minstrel show, and he said: "I will hold you responsible
for this." Pa said he was not going to interfere in the love affairs of
any of the freaks, and just then the bearded woman came in, and when she
saw the living skeleton holding the hand of the fat woman, who sat on
the floor like a balloon blowed up, the bearded woman gave a kick at the
living skeleton which sounded like clothes bars falling down in the
laundry, and she grabbed the fat woman's blonde wig and pulled it off,
and then the bearded woman began to cry and she threw herself into pa's
arms and began