The salesman shrieked. "You monster, you fiend, you horror! Begone! Begone, I say!"
Lampley closed the door behind him. The next shop was a tobacconist-stationery-novelty store. In the showcase were giant pipes, twists of burley, packages of latakia and perique, warped boxes of dried-out cigars, false mustaches, lapel flowers to spray water in startled eyes, puzzles, cryptograms, tiny spheres fitting endlessly inside of each other, moldering reams of paper, flyspecked envelopes, faded typewriter ribbons, filing indices in cyrillic. The Governor was not surprised to see the storekeeper was the legless sailor-juggler.
"Come in, lad; a hearty welcome to you," he said. "Been traveling in strange parts, I see. How are the women?"
"Small," said the Governor.
The juggler smacked his thigh with a big hand. He laughed till he coughed. He strapped on a pair of aluminum legs and danced a hornpipe. He took a gallon jug from behind the counter and tilted it against his lips. "Small ay? Small and naked and full of bile?"
The Governor nodded.
"Then you're poisoned, lad," said the juggler heartily. "You'll never be happy with the other kind again. O the lovelies, the darlings, the dainty morsels: they'll cut out your heart, eat your liver, pluck your eyeballs from your skull, bless them."
"But," said Lampley, distressed, "surely it doesn't have to be that way?"
"Surely, surely," said the juggler.