Toby thought, as he looked at her, that she was large enough to give 'most any one a pretty rough time, but he did not venture to say so. While he was looking first at her, and then at her very thin husband, the skeleton told his wife the little which he had learned regarding the boy's history, and when he had concluded she waddled away toward her tent. "Great woman that," said the skeleton, as he saw her disappear within the tent. "Yes," said Toby, "she's the greatest I ever saw." "I mean that she's got a great head. Now you'll see about how much she cares for what Job says." "If I was as big as her," said Toby, with just a shade of envy in his voice, "I wouldn't be afraid of anybody." "It hain't so much the size," said the skeleton, sagely--"it hain't so much the size, my boy; for I can scare that woman almost to death when I feel like it." Toby looked for a moment at Mr. Treat's thin legs and arms, and then he said, warningly, "I wouldn't feel like it very often if I was you, Mr. Treat, 'cause she might break some of your bones if you didn't happen to scare her enough." "Don't fear for me, my boy--don't fear for me; you'll see how I manage her if you stay with the circus long enough. Now I often--" If Mr. Treat was going to confide a family secret to Toby, it was fated that he should not hear it then, for Mrs. Treat had just come out of her tent, carrying in her hands a large tin plate piled high with a miscellaneous assortment of pie, cake, bread, and meat. [Illustration: TOBY GETS HIS SUPPER.] She placed this in front of Toby, and as she did so she handed him two pictures. "There, little Toby Tyler," she said--"there's something for you to eat, if Mr. Job Lord and his precious partner Jacobs did say you shouldn't have any supper; an' I've brought you a picture of Samuel an' me. We sell 'em for ten cents apiece, but I'm going to give them to you, because I like the looks of you." Toby was quite overcome with the presents, and seemed at a loss how to thank her for them. He attempted to speak, couldn't get the words out at first, and then he said, as he put the two photographs in the same pocket with his money: "You're awful good to me, an' when I get to be a man I'll give you lots of things. I wasn't so very hungry, if I am such a big eater, but I did want something." "Bless your dear little heart, and you shall have something to eat," said the fat woman, as she seized Toby, squeezed him close up to her, and kissed his freckled face as kindly as if it had been as fair and white as possible. "You shall eat all you want to, an' if you get the stomach-ache, as Samuel does sometimes when he's been eatin' too much, I'll give you some catnip tea out of the same dipper that I give him his. He's a great eater, Samuel is," she added, in a burst of confidence, "an' it's a wonder to me what he does with it all sometimes."