bbers previously referred to,
and goes on an exploring expedition down under the nail, looking for the
quick. She always finds it. There is no record of a failure to find
the quick. Having found it she proceeds to wake it up and teach it some
parlor tricks. I may not have set forth all these various details in the
exact order in which they take place, but I know she does them all. And
somewhere along about the time when she is half way through with the
first hand she makes you put the other hand in the suds.

Later on when you have had more practice at this thing you learn to wait
for the signal before plunging the second hand into the suds, but being
green on this occasion, you are apt to mistake the moving of the crock
of suds over from the right hand side to the left hand side as a notice
and to poke your untouched hand right in without further orders, hoping
to get it softened up well so as to save her trouble in trimming it down
to a size which will suit her. But this is wrong--this is very wrong,
as she tells you promptly, with a pitying smile for your ignorance.
Manicure girls are as careful about boiling a hand as some particular
people are about bailing their eggs for breakfast of a morning. A two
minute hand is no pleasure to her absolutely if she has diagnosed your
hand as one calling for six minutes, or vice versa. So, should you err
in this regard she will snatch the offending hand out and wipe it off
and give it back to you and tell you to keep it in a dry place until she
calls for it. Manicure girls are very funny that way.

Thus time passes on and on and by degrees you begin to feel more and
more at home. Your bashfulness is wearing off. The coherent power of
speech has returned to you and you have exchanged views with her on the
relative merits of the better known brands of chewing gum and which kind
holds the flavor longest, and you have swapped ideas on the issue of
whether ladies should or should not smoke cigarettes in public and she
knows how much your stick pin cost you and you know what her favorite
flower is. You are getting along fine, when all of a sudden she dabs
your nails with a red paste and then snatches up a kind of a polishing
tool and ferociously rubs your fingers until they catch on fire. Just
when the conflagration threatens to become general she stops using the
polisher and proceeds to cool down the ruins by gently burnishing your
nails against the soft, pink palm of her hand. You l