What they don't know about the price won't hurt them. Two
for nine I'll tell them."
"To this day ma believes that five-hundred-dollar bar pin I brought her
two years ago from Pittsburgh cost fifty at auction."
"There's Moe Marx from Kansas City just coming in! Spy the blonde he's
with, will you? I guess Moe is used to that from home, nix! There's a
firm, Marx-Jastrow, made a mint last year."
"Look!"
The lights had sunk down, the sea of faces receding into fog. The buzz
died, too, and doors were swung against the steady shuffle of incomers.
From behind the curtains a chime tonged roundly and in one key.
One--two--three--four--five--six--seven--eight--nine--ten--eleven
--twelve!
Then the orange curtains parted and on a gilded dais the width of the
room, in startling relief against a purple circle the size of a tower
clock, the Old Year, hoar on his beard and with limbs that shivered in
an attitude of abdication, held out an hourglass to a pink-legged cherub
with a gold band in his or her short curls.
A shout went up and a great clanging of forks against frail glass, the
pop of corks and the quick fizz ensuing. The curtains closed and the
lights flashed up.
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