P. G. Wodehouse: The Man Upstairs and Other Stories

4. WHEN DOCTORS DISAGREE (continued)

'You know what I mean. Do you think I didn't see you frowning when I was doing that gentleman's nails?'

The allusion was to the client who had just left--a jovial individual with a red face, who certainly had made Maud giggle a good deal. And why not? If a gentleman tells really funny stories, what harm is there in giggling? You had to be pleasant to people. If you snubbed customers, what happened? Why, sooner or later, it got round to the boss, and then where were you? Besides, it was not as if the red-faced customer had been rude. Write down on paper what he had said to her, and nobody could object to it. Write down on paper what she had said to him, and you couldn't object to that either. It was just Arthur's silliness.

She tossed her head.

'I am gratified,' said Arthur, ponderously--in happier moments Maud had admired his gift of language; he read a great deal: encyclopedias and papers and things--'I am gratified to find that you had time to bestow a glance on me. You appeared absorbed.'

Maud sniffed unhappily. She had meant to be cold and dignified throughout the conversation, but the sense of her wrongs was beginning to be too much for her. A large tear splashed on to her tray of orange-sticks. She wiped it away with the chamois leather.

'It isn't fair,' she sobbed. 'It isn't. You know I can't help it if gentlemen talk and joke with me. You know it's all in the day's work. I'm expected to be civil to gentlemen who come in to have their hands done. Silly I should look sitting as if I'd swallowed a poker. I do think you might understand, Arthur, you being in the profession yourself.'

He coughed.

'It isn't so much that you talk to them as that you seem to like--'

He stopped. Maud's dignity had melted completely. Her face was buried in her arms. She did not care if a million customers came in, all at the same time.