t was Watty
and the snake-charmer woman. Only she wasn't charming them now. Her and
Watty had a Parisian Models' show. I ast Watty where Dolly was. He says
he don't know, that Dolly has quit him. By which I guess he means he has
quit her. I ast where Reginald is, and the Human Ostrich. But from
the way they answered my questions I seen I wasn't welcome none around
there. I suppose that Mrs. Ostrich and Watty had met up agin somewheres,
and had jest natcherally run off with each other and left their
famblies. Like as not she had left poor old Reginald with that idiotic
ostrich feller to sell to strangers that didn't know his disposition. Or
mebby by now Reginald was turned loose in the open country to shift
fur himself, among wild snakes that never had no human education nor
experience; and what chancet would a friendly snake like Reginald have
in a gang like that? Some women has jest simply got no conscience at all
about their husbands and famblies, and that there Mrs. Ostrich was one
of 'em.

Well, a feller can be a derned fool sometimes. Fur all my looking around
I wasted a lot of time before I thought of going to the one natcheral
place--the freight depot of the road them bottles had been shipped by.
I had lost a week coming down. But freight often loses more time than
that. And it was at the freight depot that I found him.

Tickled? Well, yes! Both of us.

"Well, by George," says he, "you're good for sore eyes."

Before he told me how he happened not to of drownded or blowed away or
anything he says we better fix up a bit. Which he meant I better. So he
buys me duds from head to heel, and we goes to a Turkish bath place and
I puts 'em on. And then we goes and eats. Hearty.

"Now," he says, "Fido Cut-up, how did you find me?"*

I told him about the bottles.

"A dead loss, those bottles," he says. "I wanted some non-refillable
ones for a little scheme I had in mind, and I had to get them at a
certain place--and now the scheme's up in the air and I can't use 'em."

The doctor had changed some in looks in the year or more that had passed
since I saw him floating away in that balloon. And not fur the better.
He told me how he had blowed clean acrost Lake Erie in that there
balloon. And then when he got over land agin and went to pull the
cord that lets the parachute loose it wouldn't work at first. He jest
natcherally drifted on into the midst of nowhere, he said--miles and
miles into Canada. When he lit the bal