the sidewalls. Now this girl said I was to
talk about midgets and circuses. What I know about midgets and
circuses would fill two books. My problem is to leave out the
commonplace routine and tell 'inside stuff.'"

Mrs. Gillis had cleared a side table where Davy, in his high chair,
could jot down the items that he would use in his talk. It was while
he was thus engaged of afternoons and evenings that Mrs. Gillis heard
the life story of the only midget she had ever known.

"My name wasn't always Lannarck," Davy explained one afternoon when
Mrs. Gillis detailed something of her ancestry and early childhood.
"My name was O'Rahan, and I was christened Daniel. I am Irish--both
sides. My Dad was a young, happy-go-lucky Irish lad, a hard worker, a
free liver, and surely improvident. Foot-loose and free he joined a
party in the rush to the Klondike. Three years later he came back with
enough money to fill a pad saddle. And they took it away from him as
fast as he had accumulated it.

"He met my mother, Ellen Monyhan, at a party, and he was as speedy at
courting as he was at spending. They were married but a short while
when the financial crash came. He was ashamed and humiliated but not
beaten. He wanted another try at this fascinating game. He went back
to the Klondike--and to his death at sea.

"I was born in a hospital in Springfield. My young, heartbroken mother
died there. There were no relatives nearer than cousins. In due time I
was committed to an orphanage. I have no memory of either parent and
my information concerning them is meager and second hand. Now this
orphanage was well conducted, but it wasn't a home; it was an
institution. With anywhere from thirty to sixty children to care for,
it lacked the personal equation. It was mass production--you did
things by rote, en-masse--no individuality. But I have no complaint.
As a babe and child I was well-fed and clothed, in a uniform common to
all.

"And then I started to school along with all the others. But something
was happening to me that did not happen to the others. I quit growing.
Mentally I was like the others--kept up with my grades--but I never
grew taller than thirty-two inches and never weighed more than
thirty-eight pounds. Other children would shoot up like corn stalks,
but I stayed right where I had been in the months and years past.

"To me, it was a heart breaking disclosure. I wanted to play ball, to
make the team, only to find that as the slow m