Wilson brought three of his glass strips, and said—
“I get the subject to pass the fingers of his right hand through his hair, so as to get a little coating of the natural oil on them, and then press the balls of them on the glass. A fine and delicate print of the lines in the skin results, and is permanent, if it doesn’t come in contact with something able to rub it off. You begin, Tom.”
“Why, I think you took my finger-marks once or twice before.”
“Yes; but you were a little boy the last time, only about twelve years old.”
“That’s so. Of course I’ve changed entirely since then, and variety is what the crowned heads want, I guess.”
He passed his fingers through his crop of short hair, and pressed them one at a time on the glass. Angelo made a print of his fingers on another glass, and Luigi followed with the third. Wilson marked the glasses with names and date, and put them away. Tom gave one of his little laughs, and said—
“I thought I wouldn’t say anything, but if variety is what you are after, you have wasted a piece of glass. The hand-print of one twin is the same as the hand-print of the fellow-twin.”
“Well, it’s done now, and I like to have them both, anyway,” said Wilson, returning to his place.
“But look here, Dave,” said Tom, “you used to tell people’s fortunes, too, when you took their finger-marks. Dave’s just an all-round genius—a genius of the first water, gentlemen; a great scientist running to seed here in this village, a prophet with the kind of honor that prophets generally get at home—for here they don’t give shucks for his scientifics, and they call his skull a notion-factory—hey, Dave, ain’t it so? But never mind; he’ll make his mark some day—finger-mark, you know, he-he! But really, you want to let him take a shy at your palms once; it’s worth twice the price of admission or your money’s returned at the door. Why, he’ll read your wrinkles as easy as a book, and not only tell you fifty or sixty things that’s going to happen to you, but fifty or sixty thousand that ain’t. Come, Dave, show the gentlemen what an inspired Jack-at-all-science we’ve got in this town, and don’t know it.”
Wilson winced under this nagging and not very courteous chaff, and the twins suffered with him and for him. They rightly judged, now, that the best way to relieve him would be to take the thing in earnest and treat it with respect, ignoring Tom’s rather overdone raillery; so Luigi said—