All this yelled in the faces of the entire Biff-Bang company. It was more inhuman and debasing than my first physical examination in public. The doctors on this occasion, although they had not complimented me, had at least been comparatively impersonal in despatching their offices, but these men were far from being impersonal. I perceived with horror that it was their intention to use my chest as a means of bringing humor into their drab existences. Tony came and surveyed me critically.
"That," he drawled musically, "ees not a chest. That ees the bottom part of hees neck."
"I know it is," replied the other, "but somehow his arms have gotten mixed up in the middle of it."
Tony shrugged his shoulders eloquently. He assumed the appearance of a man completely baffled.
"Honestly, now, young feller," continued my first tormentor, "are you serious when you try to tell us that that is your chest?"
He drew attention to the highly disputed territory by poking me diligently with his thumb.
"That's the part the doctor always listened to whenever I had a cold," I replied as indifferently as possible. The man pondered over this for a moment.
"Well," he replied at length, "probably the doctor was right, but to the impartial observer it would seem to be, as my friend Tony so accurately observed, the bottom part of your neck."
"It really doesn't matter much after all," I replied, hoping to close the conversation. "You all were not sent here to establish the location of the different parts of my anatomy, anyway."
The man appeared not to have heard me. "I'd swear," he murmured musingly, standing back and regarding me with tilted head, "I'd swear it was his neck if it warn't for his arms." He suddenly discontinued his dreamy observations and became all business.