"
"You're crazy with the heat," said Miss Hoag. "What I've got out of this
business, I've sweated for."
Then the Baron de Ross executed a pirouette of tiny self. "Worth your
weight in gold! Worth your weight in gold!"
"If you don't behave yourself, you little peewee, I'll leave you to plow
home through the sand alone. If it wasn't for me playing nurse-girl to
you, you'd have to be hiring a keeper. You better behave."
"Worth your weight in gold! Blow us to a ice-cream cone. Eh, Ossi?"
The crowd had sifted out; all but one of the center aisle of grill
arc-lights flickered out, leaving the Freak Palace to a spluttering kind
of gloom. The Snake-charmer, of a thousand iridescencies, wound the last
of her devitalized cobras down into its painted chest. The Siamese Twins
untwisted out of their embrace and went each his way. The Princess
Albino wove her cotton hair into a plait, finishing it with a rapidly
wound bit of thread. An attendant trundled the Ossified Man through a
rear door. Jastrow the Granite Jaw flopped on his derby, slightly askew,
and strolled over toward that same door, hands in pocket. He was thewed
like an ox. Short and as squattily packed down as a Buddha, the great
sinews of his strength bulged in his short neck and in the backs of the
calves of his legs, even rippled beneath his coat.
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