Pa said he didn't want to do it, 'cause it seemed too much like fraud,
but they told him the fate of the show depended on our all being willing
to take any part assigned to us, and so pa sat down and began to fan
himself, and tried to look flirty like a woman.

The other freaks never noticed but what it was the fat woman until the
show was half over. It was too much for me, and I just laffed at pa. I
got up behind him and told him in a whisper that I wanted a dollar to
play the slot machine, and he told me to go to thunder, and get out of
there. I couldn't stand it to be insulted by my own father, so I took a
hat pin out of the hat of the bearded lady and punched it into pa's
blowed up rubber shirt, and pa began to sis, like a soda fountain, and
the wind struck the living skeleton and blew him over like a cyclone,
and by that time pa was blowing off wind in a dozen places that I had
punctured, and he was scared for fear there wouldn't be anything left of
him, and the giant saw the fat woman slowly fading away, and the coward
had heart failure and lay down on the platform. Somebody shouted that
the fat woman was all melting away, and a fellow who was watering a
camel out of a bucket came to the rescue and threw the bucket of dirty
water all over pa, and then I thought I better go away into the tent and
see the fight, but pa was taken to the dressing room and rescued from
the shrinking rubber balloons that were busted, and he said he would
hunt the man that punctured his tire to his dying day, but he didn't
know it was me.

[Illustration: I Punctured Pa's Tires.]

Gee, it looks to me as though pa has been engaged to act as the easy
mark in this show. Say, they got pa to practice on roaring like a lion,
so he could stand behind the cage when the lion has a sore throat and