"Cheer up, Ossi! It might be worse," she said across the left rail, but
her lids twitching involuntarily of tiredness.
"Sacred Mother of the Sacred Child!" said the Ossified Man, in Italian.
The sword-swallower, at the megaphone instance of the barker, waggled
suddenly into motion, and, flouncing back her bushy knee-skirts and
kissing to the four winds, threw back her head and swallowed an
eighteen-inch carpenter's saw to the hilt. The crowd flowed up and
around her.
Miss Hoag felt on the undershelf of her table for a glass of water,
draining it. "Thank God," she said, "another day done!" and began
getting together her photographs into a neat packet, tilting the
contents of the saucer into a small biscuit-tin and snapping it around
with a rubber band.
The Baron de Ross was counting, too, his small hands eager at the task.
"This Island is getting as hard-boiled as an egg," he said.
"It is that," said Miss Hoag, making a pencil insert into a small
memorandum-book.
"You!" cried the Baron, the screw lines out again. "You money-bag tied
in the middle! I know a tattooed girl worked with you once on the St.
Louis World's Fair Pike says you slept on a pillow stuffed with
greenbacks.
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