Mr. Treat cut generous slices from the turkey for each guest, and Mrs. Treat piled their plates high with all sorts of vegetables, complaining, after the manner of housewives generally, that the food was not cooked as she would like to have had it, and declaring that she had had poor luck with everything that morning, when she firmly believed in her heart that her table had never looked better. After the company had had the edge taken off their appetites--which effect was produced on the sword swallower only after he had been helped three different times, the conversation began by the fat woman asking Toby how he got along with Mr. Lord. Toby could not give a very good account of his employer, but he had the good sense not to cast a damper on a party of pleasure by reciting his own troubles; so he said, evasively: “I guess I shall get along pretty well, now that I have got so many friends.” Just as he had commenced to speak the skeleton had put into his mouth a very large piece of turkey--very much larger in proportion than himself--and when Toby had finished speaking he started to say something evidently not very complimentary to Mr. Lord. But what it was the company never knew; for just as he opened his mouth to speak, the food went down the wrong way, his face became a bright purple, and it was quite evident that he was choking. Toby was alarmed, and sprang from his chair to assist his friend, upsetting Mr. Stubbs from his seat, causing him to scamper up the tent pole, with the napkin still tied around his neck, and to scold in his most vehement manner. Before Toby could reach the skeleton, however, the fat woman had darted toward her lean husband, caught him by the arm, and was pounding his back, by the time Toby got there, so vigorously that the boy was afraid her enormous hand would go through his tissue paper like frame. “I wouldn't,” said Toby, in alarm; “you may break him.” “Don't you get frightened,” said Mrs. Treat, turning her husband completely over, and still continuing the drumming process. “He's often taken this way; he's such a glutton that he'd try to swallow the turkey whole if he could get it in his mouth, an' he's so thin that 'most anything sticks in his throat.” “I should think you'd break him all up,” said Toby, apologetically, as he resumed his seat at the table; “he don't look as if he could stand very much of that sort of thing.” But apparently Mr. Treat could stand very much more than Toby gave him credit for, because at this juncture he stopped coughing, and his face fast assumed its natural hue. His attentive wife, seeing that he had ceased struggling, lifted him in her arms and sat him down in his chair with a force that threatened to snap his head off. “There!” she said, as he wheezed a little from the effects of the shock, “now see if you can behave yourself an' chew your meat as you ought to! One of these days when you're alone you'll try that game, and that 'll be the last of you.”