United States or Monaco ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It is his function to persuade with winged words his adversary, the company's local underwriter or "counterman," that the stock of cheap millinery belonging to the Slavonic gentlemen with the unfortunate record of two fires of unknown origin and two opportune failures is even more desirable at the rate than the large line on the substantial office building which he half exhibits, holding suggestively back.
It looks to me as if we'd only get what he left targets, and big lines where Jenkinson and Hammond Dow have enough to go round." Mr. Cuyler's oldest friend had never seen him more troubled than at this moment. So deep, in fact, was his gloom that the President put aside his own concern to try to reassure his old counterman. In this he succeeded not at all; Mr. Cuyler's dejection was settled.
He entered the next one he came to. It was dirty; the windows held several years' accumulation of cooking grease, but the aroma was terrific to a young animal who'd been without food since yesterday afternoon. The counterman did not like kids, but he put away his dislike at the sight of Jimmy's money.
The cheapness of synthetics and the discovery that many diseases common to Earth would not attack Mars-normal bodies led to the wide use of synthetics on Earth. No pariah could have been expected to afford Earth-normal. Feldman finished the soup, and found a cigarette that was smokable. "Any objections if I sit in the waiting room?" He'd expected a rejection, but the counterman only shrugged.
The counterman took his money and was very careful about making the right change; if this dirty kid had swiped the five-spot, it could be the counterman's problem of explaining to someone why he had overcharged. Jimmy's intelligence told him that countermen in a joint like this didn't expect tips, so he saved himself that hurdle.
The counterman didn't even glance up as he entered. Feldman gazed at the printed menu and flinched. "Soup," he ordered. It was the cheapest item he could find. The counterman stared at him, obviously spotting his Earth origin. "You adjusted to synthetics?" Feldman nodded. Earth operated on a mixed diet, with synthetics for all who couldn't afford the natural foods there.
Many an ingenious placer has had the binders of his very worst risks that he had been totally unable to cover freshly typewritten every morning in order to convey the impression that the order had that moment been secured by his firm and that the hesitating counterman to whom it was being presented with elaborate indifference was the first the best friend of the placer to whom the line had been offered.
Word Of The Day