Finally I let her smooth a pointed tooth with a silver thimble.
''Let me look,'' she says. She has seen me rubbing my cheek. ''Come to the light.''
I stand at the window, put back my head. Her hand is warm, her breath—with the yeast of beer upon it—warm also. She reaches, and feels about my gum.
''Well, that is sharper,'' she says, drawing back her hand, ''than—''
''Than a serpent''s tooth, Sue?''
''Than a needle, I was going to say.'' She looks about her. ''Do snakes have teeth, miss?''◤思◤兔◤網◤
''I think they must, since they are said to bite.''
''That''s true,'' she says distractedly. ''Only, I had imagined them gummier ..."
She has gone to my dressing-room. I can see, through the open door, the bed and, pushed well beneath it, the chamber-pot: she has warned me, more than once, of how china pots may break beneath the toes of careless risers and make them lame. She has cautioned me, in a similar spirit, against the stepping on, in naked feet, of
hairs (since hairs—like worms, she says—may work their way into the