Page:Glitter (1926).pdf/286

 stag party of six. One of the six was lost in slumber, gripping the neck of a bottle in an oblivious fist. His companions were very much awake. They had shifted their chairs so as to face the entertainers, and they lolled back, crossing their corpulent shins, and whistled, and cat-called, and grimaced behind the films sent up by their cigars. Their hands alternately whacked approval and delved into their pockets. . . . Jock found himself noting details with a peculiar cold precision. The diamond on one man's little finger. The three wisps of hair brushed so meticulously across the naked pate of a second. The stubble of beard on the chin of a third. ..

Clink! Clinkclinkclink! Clink!

Other groups were following the example of the inspired quintet. Coins whizzed thick and fast. Fifty-cent pieces. Quarters. Dimes. A dollar, hurled by a bibulous maiden who made a great hue and cry about it, standing up and flexing her arm like a baseball pitcher.

This took place in a mere few seconds. But it seemed to Jock that it had all begun exceedingly long ago, ages ago. It seemed to him that ever since he could remember he had stood there, a target for people's small change, like a street singer, or a beggar, or an organ-grinder's monkey—while Cecily watched. The thing would have been painful in any case; under the circumstances, it was tragic. He wanted to shrink to nothingness, to become invisible, to be swallowed by a yawning floor. He wanted, in short, all the things that shame-filled sufferers want, and that no kindly deity ever vouchsafes.

"Give them another," Yvonne whispered in his ear. "We'll have to. Hypnotizin ' Mama, 'Mama, [sic] or anything" He looked down at her and saw that she