[Illustration: HE TOOK THE FUR RIGHT OFF HIS HEAD.]
But anyway, Madame Whopper could eat all she wanted to; she was the fat lady. She was a marvelous mammoth—that’s what it said under the picture. She ate nine pieces of pie. I ate four, but anyway, she was a professional. They kept bringing her more pie. Judge Dot said once she ate eleven pieces. I liked Judge Dot, because he said he was sorry about Marshal Foch. He gave me his picture with his name on. He said if it was anyone else but me, it would cost a quarter.
But anyway, the one I liked best was Jib Jab, is he human? He had fur just like a bear, but a head like a man, only his face was brown and it had long hair on it. His face didn’t look exactly like a man and it didn’t look exactly like animal. First I was kind of scared, because in the pictures he was in a cage and he was grabbing hold of the bars and glaring awful fierce and wild. And, gee whiz, I didn’t want to eat dinner with a wild animal. Oh boy, didn’t I have a good scare when I saw him coming to the table!
He jumped over the board seat and sat down right opposite me and took the fur right off his head, just as if he was scalping himself and laid it on the ground. He looked more like a man then.
He looked across and said to me, “Hello, old top, how are they treating you?”
“Going into the parade, I hear,” he said. “That was quite a stunt you pulled. You’d never catch me like that if I once broke loose. Think you could?”
I said, “Maybe I couldn’t, but anyway, I guess you’re human, all right.”
Then he began to laugh and said to the thin man, “How goes it, Skinny; you going to ride?”
I guess he meant the parade. The fat woman said, “I wouldn’ do no ridin’ fer no proprietor, not me. The public has got to come to _me_; I wouldn’ never go to _them_.”
Judge Dot said, “It’s different with you, Jib; you ain’t human and you can’t say for yourself. You’re in the menagerie class. You got to ride in your cage. You ain’t a regular freak. I never heard of no parade work in a freak contract.”
Madame Whopper said, “I wouldn’ do parade work fer no proprietor, ride or walk, I wouldn’ not even Barnum hisself, I wouldn’.”
Jib Jab said for me to pass him the butter and then he winked at me and he said, “You’re too particular, Ma. Parade work is all right. I like parade work, except I can’t smoke. How about it, Kid?”