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. It isn't
so much what she says--it's the way she says it, the tone and all
that, which makes you feel smaller and smaller until you could
crawl into your own watch pocket and live happily there ever after.
There'd be slews of room and when you wanted the air of an evening
you could climb up in a buttonhole of your vest and be quite cosy
and comfortable. But shrink as you may, there is now no hope of
escape, for she has reached out and grabbed you firmly by the
wrist. She has you fast. You have a feeling that eight or nine
thousand people have assembled behind you and are all gazing fixedly
into the small of your back. The only things about you that haven't