"Of course I
came, dear lady. I wouldn't miss it for the worlds!" His accent is pretty good,
but when it comes to stock phrases like this, he's got so much polish you'd
think he was reading the news.
The biddie _blushed_ and _giggled_, and I felt faintly sick. I walked off to the
tables, trying not to hurry. I chose my first spot, about halfway down, where
things wouldn't be quite so picked-over. I grabbed an empty box from underneath
and started putting stuff into it: four matched highball glasses with gold
crossed bowling-pins and a line of black around the rim; an Expo '67
wall-hanging that wasn't even a little faded; a shoebox full of late sixties
O-Pee-Chee hockey cards; a worn, wooden-handled steel cleaver that you could
butcher a steer with.
I picked up my box and moved on: a deck of playing cards copyrighted '57, with
the logo for the Royal Canadian Dairy, Bala Ontario printed on the backs; a
fireman's cap with a brass badge so tarnished I couldn't read it; a three-story
wedding-cake trophy for the 1974 Eastern Region Curling Championships. The
cash-register in my mind was ringing, ringing, ringing.
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