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.The platform itself was already fulsomely occupied by a massive moving statue of a forty-niner miner, who panned for mineral wealth in the narrow blue river which swept majestically across the platform, disappearing inside the concrete at both ends.After the ringing of the clock, the ladies turned back, gazing once more at the milling crowd which filled the park below.The thin lady moved her eyes carefully, shifting her gaze quickly, like the motions of a hawk circling an unsuspecting chicken flock.The fat lady did not seem to be able to make herself stand still.She kept moving from flat bare foot to flat bare foot in a rhythmic graceless shuffle step.Then the thin one saw something.Her arm jerked like an arrow shot from a crossbow and she cried, “Oh my Lord! Look! Don’t miss this! Have you ever seen such a sight?” Her finger pointed at a solitary figure amid the crowd below.“Oh my,” the round lady said, frowning.“No—no.I swear that’s a real sack she’s wearing.”“It is.” The thin lady waved her pointing finger furiously.“And her hair.My God, I have to swear.I say you could raise chickens in that.that thatch.”“No,” said the other, with a heavy, limping smile.“You’re wrong.Not chickens—no—but eagles.You could raise eagles in there.”Hearing this, the thin lady became serious.“I imagine it won’t be long until the lesser elements find her.I frankly think it is a real pity.The poor girl.Can you imagine.? Well, I do wish.They prey on her sort.”“They have no real choice in the matter,” the round lady answered crisply.(And frankly.) “These girls come here looking for it.They seek humiliation.Openly.I’ve seen it often enough.Working down there among them.Trying to help.I ought to know.”“They are a stupid lot,” the thin lady admitted.“But—of course!”“And also—oh my God! Look! I swear she’s coming this way.Do you think she could have heard?”“No.Hush.Yes.Don’t pay her the slightest attention.” Whisperings : “She ought to know better.”Silence ensued as a lone figure emerged from the milling crowd and ascended the stairs.The girl paused on the step just below the two ladies.Her dress was a loose floppy sack, her feet were bare and black, and her hair would have made a fine nesting place for hens.The girl surveyed the two ladies with contempt.Then, as quickly as she had come, she faded back into the crowd.“Well!” said the round lady.“Have you—?” Then she laughed shrilly.“My God, the nerve of that.that.”“The police will hear of this.I can assure you I will go—” And then this lady—it was the thin lady—stopped talking.Instead, she began to squawk and cackle.Her hands slid neatly into her armpits, as though accustomed to residing there, and her elbows began to flutter.On dainty tiptoes, she pranced down the steps, leaping from one to another, squawking all the while, cackling passionately, arms fluttering like the wings of a landlocked bird.With a graceful swoop, her nose glided down to the concrete and her tongue flicked out, gathering in bits of refuse and spilled food.She pecked furiously at the steps, cackling as she savored each delicious morsel of garbage, the volume of her cries rising as she proceeded inexorably toward the grass below.Meanwhile, the round lady, who had at first watched her companion silently, now began to moo.She drew one breast—a hefty elongated structure closely resembling a flattened cannonball— from within her bodice and waved it mournfully at the crowd, as if pleading.“Moo,” she cried painfully.“Oh, moo.”Moo?Squawk?Cackle?Two such fine ladies as these—so carefully certain and pure in their first-degree?So it was.Some ten yards from the platform, arms and legs firmly latched around the width of a lamppost, the girl in the sack, her hair flaring as a wind emerged, watched the scene, laughing with unrestrained glee.Her teeth glistened fiercely white as she laughed, and so genuine, so wonderful was her joy that Andrew could not help approaching.He removed her gently from around the post, then held her warmly in his arms, stroking her sack as though it were bare flesh.“Please tell me your name,” he begged, whispering.“Duck,” she said.“Uh.What?” Andrew was a nephew of the round lady.He had accompanied her here today.But it was this sack girl—the one who said her name was Duck—whom he presently loved without end.“I said it was Duck,” said Duck.“What?” said Andrew.“Oh, Rodelphia,” she said, her patience at an end.Then hastily, before he could once more say “what?” she added, “And you’re the duck.”“What?” said the duck.Rodelphia left him quacking madly in the soft fluttering eternally springtime grass of the park
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