Miss Sabrina Smith warned me that I’d better think twice before I took up with Tom Kew, for he was a light-minded young man.  I speak o’ that to him in the winter-time, when he sets reading the almanac half asleep and I’m knitting, and the wind’s a’ howling and the waves coming ashore on those rocks as if they wished they could put out the light and blow down the lighthouse.  We were reflected on a good deal for going to that caravan; some of the old folks didn’t think it was improvin’—­Well, I should think that man was a trying to break his neck!”

Coming out of the great tent was disagreeable enough, and we seemed to have chosen the worst time, for the crowd pushed fiercely, though I suppose nobody was in the least hurry, and we were all severely jammed, while from somewhere underneath came the wails of a deserted dog.  We had not meant to see the side-shows, and went carelessly past two or three tents; but when we came in sight of the picture of the Kentucky giantess, we noticed that Mrs. Kew looked at it wistfully, and we immediately asked if she cared anything about going to see the wonder, whereupon she confessed that she never heard of such a thing as a woman’s weighing six hundred and fifty pounds, so we all three went in.  There were only two or three persons inside the tent, beside a little boy who played the hand-organ.

The Kentucky giantess sat in two chairs on a platform, and there was a large cage of monkeys just beyond, toward which Kate and I went at once.  “Why, she isn’t more than two thirds as big as the picture,” said Mrs. Kew, in a regretful whisper; “but I guess she’s big enough; doesn’t she look discouraged, poor creatur’?” Kate and I felt ashamed of ourselves for being there.  No matter if she had consented to be carried round for a show, it must have been horrible to be stared at and joked about day after day; and we gravely looked at the monkeys, and in a few minutes turned to see if Mrs. Kew were not ready to come away, when to our surprise we saw that she was talking to the giantess with great interest, and we went nearer.

“I thought your face looked natural the minute I set foot inside the door,” said Mrs. Kew; “but you’ve—­altered some since I saw you, and I couldn’t place you till I heard you speak.  Why, you used to be spare; I am amazed, Marilly!  Where are your folks?”

“I don’t wonder you are surprised,” said the giantess.  “I was a good ways from this when you knew me, wasn’t I?  But father he run through with every cent he had before he died, and ‘he’ took to drink and it killed him after a while, and then I begun to grow worse and worse, till I couldn’t do nothing to earn a dollar, and everybody was a coming to see me, till at last I used to ask ’em ten cents apiece, and I scratched along somehow till this man came round and heard of me, and he offered me my keep and good pay to go along with him.  He had another giantess before me, but she had begun to fall away consider’ble,