“How about you, Shorty; got a match?” he asked Judge Dot.
Judge Dot just said very stiff like, “I’ll bid you good night, sir.”
“Happy dreams, Shorty,” Jib Jab called after him. Then he said, “That’s the trouble with all these freaks—uppish, especially the giant. Why he looks down on everybody. Ma’s about the best of the lot. Shorty thinks he’s the whole circus just because he has three rings on his hands. Same with Skinny. I’d rather be back in the jungle than living with this bunch. Half the time they don’t speak to me. You see I’m not a regular freak; they look on me as a kind of a butt-in.”
I said, “Gee, I’m sorry; I should think they’d like you.”
“They’re all jealous,” he said; “that’s the trouble. They’re all down on parade work, even Ma. They couldn’t stand for me making a hit with that chain. Last week, up in Albany, I started to growl just as Shorty started selling his photographs. The louder he piped away with that silly little squeaky voice of his, the more I roared. When it comes to roaring, I’ve got even the lions jealous. Fact is I’m not liked; they are all jealous, even the animals. And I feel it, too; any honest hard working _what-is-it_ would. Especially if he’s human. The little two-headed boy we had was about the best of the lot, only he was double faced. He’s with Barnum’s now—fifty a week and overtime.”
“I don’t see why you want to be a _what-is-it_,” I told him; “especially if they don’t treat you right.”
He just went on smoking, awful funny, kind of. Jiminy, I couldn’t make him out at all.
He said, “Now you take Teddy Roosevelt, the elephant. He’s what you’d call a big attraction—very big. Do you suppose he’d refuse to pal with me just because I’m a poor, neglected _what-is-it_? Only this morning we had a bag of peanuts together; he and I and little Ruth. He’s just as plain and democratic as he can be. But you see my position isn’t easy. I’m human and yet I’m not. I don’t know where I fit in. The animals are kind of leary; you can’t blame them. And the freaks are as stuck up as poor old Marshal Foch was. Sometimes I wish I was back in the jungle.”
Jingoes, I didn’t know how to take him at all, and I could see Dorry was just staring at him as if he didn’t know whether he was jollying us or not.