"My God! Will you look who's here!" She came
to me with her two hands stretched out. "Billy, wretched creature, I
haven't laid eyes on you for two months! Do you have to desert me
entirely, just because you've fallen in love with a society girl
with the face of a Japanese doll-baby? What's the matter with me,
that I lose my lovers faster than I get them? I just met Edgerton
Rosythe; he's got a good excuse, I admit--I'm almost as much scared
of his wife as he is himself. But still, I'd like a chance to get
tired of some man first! Want to come upstairs with me, and see what
Planchet's doing to my old grannie in her scalping-shop? Say, would
you think it would take three days' labor for half a dozen Sioux
squaws to pull the skin off one old lady's back? And a week to tie
up the corners of her mouth and give her a permanent smile! 'Why,
grannie,' I said, 'good God, it would be cheaper to hire Charlie
Chaplin to walk around in front of you all the rest of your life.'
But the old girl was bound to be beautiful, so I said to Planchet,
'Make her new from the waist up, Madame, for you never can tell how
the fashions'll change, and what she'll need to show.
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