Hey--what?"
He produced the coin.
Fuzzy laughed a gurgling, insolent, alcoholic laugh in his face. Go to
the office of Sarah Bernhardt's manager and propose to him that she be
released from a night's performance to entertain the Tackytown Lyceum
and Literary Coterie. You will hear the duplicate of Fuzzy's laugh.
Black Riley gauged Fuzzy quickly with his blueberry eye as a wrestler
does. His hand was itching to play the Roman and wrest the rag Sabine
from the extemporaneous merry-andrew who was entertaining an angel
unaware. But he refrained. Fuzzy was fat and solid and big. Three inches
of well-nourished corporeity, defended from the winter winds by dingy
linen, intervened between his vest and trousers. Countless small,
circular wrinkles running around his coat-sleeves and knees guaranteed
the quality of his bone and muscle. His small, blue eyes, bathed in the
moisture of altruism and wooziness, looked upon you kindly, yet without
abashment. He was whiskerly, whiskyly, fleshily formidable. So, Black
Riley temporized.
"Wot'll you take for it, den?" he asked.
"Money," said Fuzzy, with husky firmness, "cannot buy her."
He was intoxicated with the artist's first sweet cup of attainment.
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