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you think that a Fat Woman hasn't got any feelings? I'm a woman, if I do weigh three hundred pounds, and I've got a woman's feelings, though none of you men ever seem to think so.' I told her that there wasn't any question about her feelings, and that I had no concern with anything but her weight, and that if she began to lose flesh she couldn't expect me to stick to the contract. 'Just put all this foolishness out of your mind,' I said, 'and try to work yourself up to four hundred pounds. That's an ambition worthy of a sensible woman, while thishyer falling in love is only fit for women who haven't got brains or flesh to earn their own living.'
"But my advice was wasted, as advice always is, and in a few days the Fat Woman came to me and asked to be let off her contract, so that she could be married and go to keeping house for her husband. It made me mad to see her so willing to throw away her future, and so careless about my own interests, considering that I had treated her kindly and liberally, and I told her that I should hold her to her contract, which had two years more to run, and would sue her for damages if she left me, or if she neglected to keep herself up to her usual weight. This made her pretty angry, and she said that she should do as she pleased, and that I was a horrid brute. So I saw that I was going to have trouble with her.
"That night the Fat Woman had a long talk with her admirer after the performance was over, and for the next day or two was in such good spirits that I knew she must mean mischief. The fact was that the fellow had induced her to agree to elope with him, and she felt so sure that her professional career was coming to a happy end that she openly took to drinking vinegar and eating meat, and drew in her waist till she looked as if she was on the edge of apoplexy.
"I looked out of the window.".
"The Fat Woman's room was just over mine, and naturally she couldn't move round much without waking me, though I am a pretty middling sound sleeper. Soon after she had taken to vinegar, I was waked up one night by hearing her walking about her room in her boots, and as my watch said it was two o'clock, I knew something was up. By-and-by she came downstairs as softly as she could, though the stairs did groan as stairs will when you put three hundred pounds of woman on them in the middle of the night. I got up and looked out of the window, and there was a carriage standing by the stage door. I saw the Fat Woman's little game at once. She was going to run away with the ticket speculator.
"My first thought was to dress and run out and stop her, but presently I remembered how narrow the stage door was, and I made up my mind to wait and see the fun: my window being where it commanded a good view of the scene of action. Just as I anticipated, the Fat Woman halted when she came to the stage door, and presently I heard her call in a low voice: 'Tom, come and help me, I'm stuck in the door!' Tom climbed down out of the carriage, and getting a good hold of one of the Fat Woman's arms, braced himself against the jamb of the door and pulled his level best. But he couldn't start her, and though she stood it like a heroine, she had to tell him, after he had pulled a while, that she couldn't stand it any longer.
"Then Tom tried to push her back into the corridor, so that she could take a fresh start and maybe get herself through the door edgewise, but he couldn't budge her. So the two whispered together awhile, and then Tom called the driver of the carriage to come and help him. The driver was the most intelligent of the lot, and he said that the only way to get