Your hands would give you away if your face didn't. In
a sibulent aside, she addresses the young lady at the next table--
the one with the nine bracelets and the hair done up delicatessen
store mode--sausages, rolls and buns--whereupon both of them laugh
in a significant, silvery way, and you feel the back of your neck
setting your collar on fire. You can smell the bone button back
there scorching and you're glad it's not celluloid, celluloid being
more inflammable and subject to combustion when subjected to
intense heat.
When both have laughed their merry fill, the young woman who has
you in charge looks you right in the eye and says:
"Dearie me; you'll pardon me saying so, but your nails are in a
perfectly turrible state. I don't think I've seen a jumpman's
nails in such a state for ever so long. Pardon me again--but how
long has it been since you had them did?"
To which you reply in what is meant to be a jaunty and off-hand
tone:
"Oh quite some little while. I've--I've been out of town."
"That's what I thought," she says with a slight shrug.
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