as plastic to her deft and magic manipulation.

Until very recently. Six months had wrought a subtle change in Geisha
McCoy. She still sang her every-day, human songs about every-day, human
people. But you failed, somehow, to recognise them as such. They sounded
sawdust-stuffed. And you were likely to hear the man behind you say,
"Yeh, but you ought to have heard her five years ago. She's about
through."

Such was six-eighteen. Martha Foote, luxuriating in that one delicious
moment between her 6:30 awakening, and her 6:31 arising, mused on these
things. She thought of how, at eleven o'clock the night before, her
telephone had rung with the sharp zing! of trouble. The voice of Irish
Nellie, on night duty on the sixth floor, had sounded thick-brogued,
sure sign of distress with her.

"I'm sorry to be a-botherin' ye, Mis' Phut. It's Nellie speakin'--Irish
Nellie on the sixt'."

"What's the trouble, Nellie?"

"It's that six-eighteen again. She's goin' on like mad. She's carryin'
on something fierce."

"What about?"

"Th'--th' blankets, Mis' Phut."

"Blankets?--"

"She says--it's her wurruds, not mine--she says they're vile. Vile, she
says."

Martha Foote's spine had stiffened. "In this house! Vile!"

If there was one thing more than another upon which Martha Foote prided
herself it was the Senate Hotel bed coverings. Creamy, spotless, downy,
they were her especial fad. "Brocade chairs, and pink lamps, and gold
snake-work are all well and good," she was wont to say, "and so are
American Beauties in the lobby and white gloves on the elevator boys.
But it's the blankets on the beds that stamp a hotel first or second
class." And now this, from Nellie.

"I know how ye feel, an' all. I sez to 'er, I sez: 'There never was a
blanket in this _house_,' I sez, 'that didn't look as if it cud be
sarved up wit' whipped cr-ream,' I sez, 'an' et,' I sez to her; 'an'
fu'thermore,' I sez--"

"Never mind, Nellie. I know. But we never argue with guests. You know
that rule as well as I. The guest is right--always. I'll send up the
linen-room keys. You get fresh blankets; new ones. And no arguments. But
I want to see those--those vile--"

"Listen, Mis' Phut." Irish Nellie's voice, until now shrill with
righteous anger, dropped a discreet octave. "I seen 'em. An' they _are_
vile. Wait a minnit! But why? Becus that there maid of hers--that yella'
hussy--give her a body massage, wit' cold cream an' all, usin' th'
blankets f'r co