Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 6).djvu/108
and that, consequently, I had changed them for her, and was a thief and an impostor. And how they chaffed that poor girl! I really felt sorry for her, though I knew she deserved it all. As for the lecturer, he left as soon as the first egg hit him on the head, and the girl would have left too, if she had been able to get out of the crowd.
"She would tear his eyes out."
"I let the row run along a little in hopes that the Frenchman would get mixed up in it, but he was no such man, and he bolted the minute it began. So seeing as there was danger that the crowd would wreck the establishment, I went in with three policemen and my four teamsters, and we cleared out the people without much trouble. I told them that there had been a mistake, and that the Tattooed Girl being sick couldn't show that day, and my secretary, not wishing to disappoint the people, had got a substitute without consulting me. What with offering them free tickets for the next day, and licking half-a-dozen or so of the most cheeky, I settled the affair up, and the next day the show was as peaceful as ever.
The Chinese sword swallower.
"What became of the Wild Man! Oh! I 'most forgot to tell you. When the Tattooed Girl found out what the row had been about she swore that the Frenchman had done it on purpose, and that she would never see him again, barring such time as might be necessary to tear his eyes out. He heard of this and had sense enough to keep on his side of the house, and she never had a chance to get at his eyes. After the month was up he left me, and that was the last I ever saw of him. The field being clear, the Wild Man makes up to the girl again, and she takes him back, making it a condition, however, that he should give up the Wild Man business and go into some other. So he set to work and learned the sword swallowing act, though a Sword Swallower doesn't command more than half the average wages of a first-class Wild Man. He's doing sword swallowing in my museum now, and don't like it very much. He told me the other day that he hankered for his old life. 'Thishyer swallowing business is too conventional for me,' he said. 'There ain't no room for the display of histrionic talent like there was in that raw meat act. But she won't have it, and I must do what pleases her.'
"They calculate calculate to be be married in about two months, and then I'll lose them both, for of course they'll quarrel, so that I shall have to get rid of the pair of them. Well, it was what might have been expected after letting a Frenchman into the show. If it wasn't that she is a mighty handsome woman, and has got the best stencilling in the profession, I'd bribe her to leave on the sly, and I'd get her lover to go back to the Wild Man business. It's the only line fit for a man of his talent, and he's just throwing himself away, as you might say, now that he is only a Chinese Sword Swallower."