twisted. She allers hated housework as bad as a pig would
a penwiper, an' Dixie hed to git his own breakfast afore he went to
work, or go off on an empty stomach. Many 's the time he 's got her
meals for her 'n' took 'em to her on a waiter. Them secesh fellers'll
wait on women folks long as they can stan' up.

"Then bime bye the baby come along; but that made things wuss 'stid o'
better. She didn't pay no more 'tention to it than if it hed belonged
to the town. She 'd go off to dances, an' leave Dixie to home tendin'
cradle; but that wa'n't no hardship to him for he was 'bout as much
wropped up in the child as he was in Fiddy. Wall, sir, 'bout a month ago
she up 'n' disappeared off the face o' the airth 'thout sayin' a word or
leavin' a letter. She took her clo'es, but she never thought o' takin'
the baby; one baby more or less didn't make no odds to her s' long 's
she hed that skeeter-nettin' cape. Dixie sarched fer her high an' low
fer a fortnight, but after that he give it up as a bad job. He found out
enough, I guess, to keep him pretty busy thinkin' what he 'd do next.
But day before yesterday the same circus that plays here this afternoon
was playin' to Wareham. A lot of us went over on the evenin' train, an'
we coaxed Dixie into goin', so 's to take his mind off his trouble. But
land! he didn't see nothin'. He 'd walk right up the lions 'n' tigers
in the menagerie as if they was cats 'n' chickens, an' all the time the
clown was singin' he looked like a dumb animile that 's hed a bullet put
in him. There was lots o' side shows, mermaids 'n' six-legged calves
'n' spotted girls, 'n' one thing 'n' 'nother, an' there was one o' them
whirligig machines with a mess o' rocking'-hosses goin' round 'n' round,
'n' an organ in the middle playin' like sixty. I wish we 'd 'a' kept
clear o' the thing, but as bad luck would hev it, we stopped to look,
an' there on top o' two high-steppin' white wooden hosses, set Mis'
Fiddy an' that dod-gasted light-complected baker-man! If ever she was
suited to a dot, it was jest then 'n' there. She could 'a' gone prancin'
round that there ring forever 'n' forever, with the whoopin' 'n'
hollerin' 'n' whizzin' 'n' whirlin' soundin' in her ears, 'n' the music
playin' like mad, 'n' she with nothin' to do but stick on 'n' let some
feller foot the bills. Somebody must 'a' ben thinkin' o' Fiddy Maddox
when the invented them whirl-a-go-rounds. She was laughin' 'n' carryin'
on like the old Scratch; her