the fat woman across the aisle from us. That fat woman is going to make
life a burden for pa, I can see that plain enough. She is engaged to the
living skeleton, and he sleeps in the upper berth, over her, and he is
jealous of pa, while the fat woman has got to depending on pa to do
little things for her.

Of course, the first night out is always the worst on a sleeper, and the
poor woman is nervous, and when the animal train, in the second section,
ran on a side track beside our train of sleepers, and Rajah, the boss
lion, got woke up and exploded one of his roars, within six feet of the
fat woman's berth, she just gave one yell, and reared up, and came down
hard in the berth. Something broke, and she went right through the
bottom of the berth to the floor, doubled up like a jackknife.

Pa got up and went to her berth, though I told him to keep away, 'cause
he would get into trouble. First he stumbled over one of her shoes, and
said he thought he had told everybody to keep their telescope valises in
the baggage car, and that made her mad. Then he reached in the berth and
got hold of one of her feet, and pa got the men to help and they got her
out, but she seemed all squshed together. She sat up all night and
wanted to lean on pa, but the skeleton kept his head over the rail of
the upper berth and his snake-like eye never left pa all night.

The bearded woman got up out of her berth about daylight, to go to the
toilet room for a shave, or a hair cut, or something, and when she saw
pa trying to soothe the fat woman and hold her from breaking in two, she
screamed and slapped pa's face, and had a mess of hysterics. The fat
woman grabbed a couple of handfuls of female whiskers, and was going to
pull them out by the roots, when the bearded woman begged her not to
pull them out, as to lose her whiskers would destroy her means of