Toby was about to say that he did not intend to represent the matter
other than it really was, when a voice from behind the canvas screen
arrested further conversation.
“Sam-u-el, come an' help me carry these things in.”
Something very like a smile of satisfaction passed over Signor Castro's
face as he heard this, which told him that the time for the feast was
near at hand; and the snake charmer, as well as the Albino Children,
seemed quite as much pleased as did the sword swallower.
“You will excuse me, ladies and gentlemen,” said the skeleton, in an
important tone; “I must help Lilly, and then I shall have the pleasure
of helping you to some of her cooking, which, if I do say it, that
oughtn't, is as good as can be found in this entire country.”
Then he, too, disappeared behind the canvas screen.
Left alone, Toby looked at the ladies, and the ladies looked at him,
in perfect silence, while the sword swallower grimly regarded them all,
until Mr. Treat reappeared, bearing on a platter an immense turkey, as
nicely browned as any Thanksgiving turkey Toby ever saw. Behind him
came his fat wife, carrying several dishes, each of which emitted a most
fragrant odor; and as these were placed upon the table the spirits of
the sword swallower seemed to revive, and he smiled pleasantly; while
even the ladies appeared animated by the sight and odor of the good
things which they were to be called upon so soon to pass judgment.
Several times did Mr. and Mrs. Treat bustle in and out from behind the
screen, and each time they made some addition to that which was upon the
table, until Toby began to fear that they would never finish, and the
sword swallower seemed unable to restrain his impatience.
At last the finishing touch had been put to the table, the last dish
placed in position, and then, with a certain kind of grace, which no one
but a man as thin as Mr. Treat could assume, he advanced to the edge of
the platform and said:
“Ladies and gentlemen, nothing gives me greater pleasure than to invite
you all, including Mr. Tyler's friend Stubbs, to the bountiful repast
which my Lilly has prepared for--”
At this point Mr. Treat's speech--for it certainly seemed as if he had
commenced to make one--was broken off in a most summary manner. His wife
had come up behind him and, with as much ease as if he had been a child,
lifted him from off the floor and placed him gently in the chair at the
head of the table.
“Come right up and get dinner,” she said to her guests. “If you had
waited until Samuel had finished his speech everything on the table
would have been stone cold.”
The guests proceeded to obey her kindly command; and it is to be
regretted that the sword swallower had no better manners than to jump
on to the platform with one bound and seat himself at the table with the
most unseemly haste. The others, and more especially Toby, proceeded in
a leisurely and more dignified manner.
A seat had been placed by the side of the one intended for Toby for the
accommodation of Mr. Stubbs, who suffered a napkin to be tied under his
chin, and behaved generally in a manner that gladdened the heart of his
young master.
Mr. Treat cut generous slices from the turkey for each guest, and Mrs.
Treat piled their plates high with all sorts of vegetables, complaining,
after the manner of housewives generally, that the food was not cooked
as she would like to have had it, and declaring that she had had poor
luck with everything that morning, when she firmly believed in her heart
that her table had never looked better.
After the company had had the edge taken off their appetites--which
effect was produced on the sword swallower only after he had been helped
three different times, the conversation began by the fat woman asking
Toby how he got along with Mr. Lord.
Toby could not give a very good account of his employer, but he had the
good sense not to cast a damper on a party of pleasure by reciting his
own troubles; so he said, evasively:
“I guess I shall get along pretty well, now that I have got so many
friends.”
Just as he had commenced to speak the skeleton had put into his mouth
a very large piece of turkey--very much larger in proportion than
himself--and when Toby had finished speaking he started to say something
evidently not very complimentary to Mr. Lord. But what it was the
company never knew; for just as he opened his mouth to speak, the food
went down the wrong way, his face became a bright purple, and it was
quite evident that he was choking.
Toby was alarmed, and sprang from his chair to assist his friend,
upsetting Mr. Stubbs from his seat, causing him to scamper up the tent
pole, with the napkin still tied around his neck, and to scold in his
most vehement manner. Before Toby could reach the skeleton, however, the
fat woman had darted toward her lean husband, caught him by the arm, and
was pounding his back, by the time Toby got there, so vigorously that
the boy was afraid her enormous hand would go through his tissue paper
like frame.
“I wouldn't,” said Toby, in alarm; “you may break him.”
“Don't you get frightened,” said Mrs. Treat, turning her husband
completely over, and still continuing the drumming process. “He's often
taken this way; he's such a glutton that he'd try to swallow the turkey
whole if he could get it in his mouth, an' he's so thin that 'most
anything sticks in his throat.”
“I should think you'd break him all up,” said Toby, apologetically, as
he resumed his seat at the table; “he don't look as if he could stand
very much of that sort of thing.”
But apparently Mr. Treat could stand very much more than Toby gave him
credit for, because at this juncture he stopped coughing, and his face
fast assumed its natural hue.
His attentive wife, seeing that he had ceased struggling, lifted him in
her arms and sat him down in his chair with a force that threatened to
snap his head off.
“There!” she said, as he wheezed a little from the effects of the shock,
“now see if you can behave yourself an' chew your meat as you ought to!
One of these days when you're alone you'll try that game, and that 'll
be the last of you.”
“If he'd try to do one of my tricks long enough he'd get so that there
wouldn't hardly anything choke him,” the sword swallower ventured to
suggest, mildly, as he wiped a small stream of cranberry sauce from his
chin and laid a well polished turkey bone by the side of his plate.
“I'd like to see him try it!” said the fat lady, with just a shade
of anger in her voice. Then turning toward her husband, she said,
emphatically, “Samuel, don't you ever let me catch you swallowing a
sword!”
“I won't, my love, I won't; and I will try to chew my meat more,”
replied the very thin glutton, in a feeble tone. Toby thought that
perhaps the skeleton might keep the first part of that promise, but he
was not quite sure about the last.
It required no little coaxing on the part of both Toby and Mrs. Treat
to induce Mr. Stubbs to come down from his lofty perch; but the task was
accomplished at last, and by the gift of a very large doughnut he was
induced to resume his seat at the table.
The time had now come when the duties of a host, in his own peculiar way
of viewing them, devolved upon Mr. Treat, and he said, as he pushed his
chair back a short distance from the table and tried to polish the front
of his vest with his napkin:
“I don't want this fact lost sight of, because it is an important one:
everyone must remember that we have gathered here to meet and become
better acquainted with the latest and best addition to this circus, Mr.
Toby Tyler.”
Poor Toby! As the company all looked directly at him, and Mrs. Treat
nodded her enormous head energetically, as if to say that she agreed
exactly with her husband, the poor boy's face grew very red and the
squash pie lost its flavor.
“Although Mr. Tyler may not be exactly one of us, owing to the fact that
he does not belong to the profession, but is only one of the adjuncts
to it, so to speak,” continued the skeleton, in a voice which was fast
being raised to its highest pitch, “we feel proud, after his exploits
at the time of the accident, to have him with us, and gladly welcome him
now, through the medium of this little feast prepared by my Lilly.”
Here the Albino Children nodded their heads in approval, and the sword
swallower gave a grunt of assent; and, thus encouraged, the skeleton
proceeded:
“I feel, when I say that we like and admire Mr. Tyler, all present will
agree with me and all would like to hear him say a word for himself.”
The skeleton seemed to have expressed the views of those present
remarkably well, judging from their expressions of pleasure and assent,
and all waited for the honored guest to speak.
Toby knew that he must say something, but he couldn't think of a single
thing; he tried over and over again to call to his mind something which
he had read as to how people acted and what they said when they were
expected to speak at a dinner table, but his thoughts refused to go back
for him, and the silence was actually becoming painful. Finally, and
with the greatest effort, he managed to say, with a very perceptible
stammer, and while his face was growing very red:
“I know I ought to say something to pay for this big dinner that you
said was gotten up for me, but I don't know what to say, unless to thank
you for it. You see, I hain't big enough to say much, an', as Uncle
Dan'l says, I don't amount to very much, 'cept for eatin', an' I guess
he's right. You're all real good to me, an' when I get to be a man I'll
try to do as much for you.”
Toby had risen to his feet when he began to make his speech, and while
he was speaking Mr. Stubbs had crawled over into his chair. When he
finished he sat down again without looking behind him, and of course sat
plump on the monkey. There was a loud outcry from Mr. Stubbs, a little
frightened noise from Toby, an instant's scrambling, and then boy,
monkey, and chair tumbled off the platform, landing on the ground in
an indescribable mass, from which the monkey extricated himself more
quickly than Toby could, and again took refuge on the top of the tent
pole.
Of course all the guests ran to Toby's assistance; and while the fat
woman poked him all over to see that none of his bones were broken, the
skeleton brushed the dirt from his clothes.
All this time the monkey screamed, yelled, and danced around on the tent
pole and ropes, as if his feelings had received a shock from which he
could never recover.
“I didn't mean to end it up that way, but it was Mr. Stubbs's fault,”
said Toby, as soon as quiet had been restored and the guests, with the
exception of the monkey, were seated at the table once more.
“Of course you didn't,” said Mrs. Treat, in a kindly tone. “But don't
you feel bad about it one bit, for you ought to thank your lucky stars
that you didn't break any of your bones.”
“I s'pose I had,” said Toby, soberly, as he looked back at the scene of
his disaster, and then up at the chattering monkey that had caused all
the trouble.
Shortly after this, Mr. Stubbs having again been coaxed down from his
lofty position, Toby took his departure, promising to call as often
during the week as he could get away from his exacting employers.
Just outside the tent he met Old Ben, who said, as he showed signs of
indulging in another of his internal laughing spells:
“Hello! has the skeleton an' his lily of a wife been givin' a blowout to
you, too?”
“They invited me in there to dinner,” said Toby, modestly.
“Of course they did--of course they did,” replied Ben, with a chuckle;
“they carries a cookin' stove along with 'em, so's they can give these
little spreads whenever we stay over a day in a place. Oh, I've been
there!”
“And did they ask you to make a speech?”
“Of course. Did they try it on you?”
“Yes,” said Toby, mournfully, “an' I tumbled off the platform when I got
through.”
“I didn't do exactly that,” replied Ben, thoughtfully; “but I s'pose you
got too much steam on, seein' 's how it was likely your first speech.
Now you'd better go into the tent an try to get a little sleep, 'cause
we've got a long ride tonight over a rough road, an' you won't get more
'n a cat nap all night.”
“But where are you going?” asked Toby, as he shifted Mr. Stubbs over to
his other shoulder, preparatory to following his friend's advice.
“I'm goin' to church,” said Ben, and then Toby noticed for the first
time that the old driver had made some attempt at dressing up. “I've
been with the circus, man an boy, for nigh to forty years, an' I allus
go to meetin' once on Sunday. It's somethin' I promised my old mother I
would do, an' I hain't broke my promise yet.”
“Why don't you take me with you?” asked Toby, wistfully, as he
thought of the little church on the hill at home, and wished--oh, so
earnestly!--that he was there then, even at the risk of being thumped on
the head with Uncle Daniel's book.
“If I'd seen you this mornin' I would,” said Ben; “but now you must try
to bottle up some sleep ag'in' tonight, an' next Sunday I'll take you.”
With these words Old Ben started off, and Toby proceeded to carry out
his wishes, although he rather doubted the possibility of “bottling up”
any sleep that afternoon.
He lay down on the top of the wagon, after having put Mr. Stubbs inside,
with the others of his tribe, and in a very few moments the boy was
sound asleep, dreaming of a dinner party at which Mr. Stubbs made a
speech and he himself scampered up and down the tent pole.