Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 6).djvu/219

stand by and see a woman suffer, and never lift a finger to help her. So I dressed slow and easy, so as to let the splinters sink into her mind as you might say, and keep her from forgetting all she owed me, and then I got my axe and came down and broke her out without much trouble. Tom had nothing to say for himself. I will give him the credit of admitting that he stood around while I was was working with the axe, till he saw that the woman was loose, and then he bolted, thinking, perhaps, that I might be disposed to use the axe on him, which would have been a waste of labour that I shouldn't have thought of undertaking. The driver tackled up his horses in no time and started after Tom as hard as he could drive, knowing that his chance of collecting payment would be middling small if he let Tom fairly out of his sight.

"The woman yelled that they were killing her."

"The Fat Woman was a good deal tore up with the splinters, and more or less exhausted by the mental strain she had gone through while the two men were trying to haul her through the stage door. She hadn't much strength left for conversation, and she went very quietly with me round to the front of the house and through the big door up to her room. When she was going into her room she turned and said:—

"'Colonel, I'll never do it again, and I'll do my best to fatten up after this.'

"'That's all right,' said I. 'You just go to bed again and forget all about it. We're all liable to make mistakes, and it wasn't your fault that you didn't know how much a floor of a carriage would bear. I'll send you up the arnica, and just you use it and forget all about Tom, who is no good anyway, and who'll never come round you again, you can bet your bottom dollar.'

"After that you never saw a more faithful and conscientious artist than that Fat Woman. She dieted herself more carefully than ever, and before the year was out she had got up to three hundred and forty pounds."