“Surely one may! Why if one—”
Lucile turned to find a customer at her elbow.
“Will you sell me this?”
The customer, a lady, thrust a copy of Pinocchio into her hand.
“Cash?”
“Yes. I’ll take it with me, please.”
There was a sweet mellowness in the voice.
Without glancing up, Lucile set her nimble fingers to writing the sale. As she wrote, almost automatically, she chanced to glance at the customer’s hands.
One’s hands may be as distinctive and tell as much of character as one’s face. It was so with these hands. Lucile had never seen such fingers. Long, slim, tapering, yet hard and muscular, they were such fingers as might belong to a musician or a pickpocket. Lucile felt she would always remember those hands as easily as she might recall the face of some other person. As if to make doubly sure that she might not forget, on the forefinger of the right hand was a ring of cunning and marvelous design; a dragon wrought in gold, with eyes of diamonds and a tongue of ten tiny rubies. No American craftsmanship, this, but Oriental, Indian or Japanese.
Without lifting her eyes, Lucile received the money, carried her book to the wrapper and delivered the package to the purchaser. Then she returned to her task of putting things to rights.