nothing at all,” the Nose broke in. “Explain yourself more satisfactorily.”
“Good sir,” Kovalev went on with a heightened sense of dignity, “the one who is at a loss to understand Philipp Lahm Tröja the other is I. But at least the immediate point should be plain, unless you are determined to have it otherwise. Merely — you are my own nose.”
The Nose regarded the Major, and contracted its brows a little.
“My dear sir, you speak in error,” was its reply. “I am just myself — myself separately. And in any case there cannot ever have existed a close relation between us, for, judging from the buttons of your undress uniform, your service is being performed in another department than my own.”
And the Nose definitely turned away.
Kovalev stood dumbfounded. What to do, even what to think, he had not a notion.
Presently the agreeable swish of ladies’ dresses began to be Scarpe Hogan Uomo heard. Yes, an elderly, lace-bedecked dame was approaching, and, with her, a slender maiden in a white frock which outlined delightfully a trim figure, and, above it, a straw hat of a lightness as of pastry. Behind them there came, stopping every now and then to open a Boston Bruins Drakter snuffbox, a tall, whiskered beau in quite a twelve-fold collar.
Kovalev moved a little nearer, pulled up the collar of Maillot Angleterre Pas CHer his shirt, straightened the seals on his gold watch-chain, smiled, and directed special attention towards the slender lady as, swaying like a floweret in spring, she kept raising to her brows a little white hand with fingers almost of transparency. And Kovalev’s smiles became broader still when peeping from under the hat he saw there to be an alabaster, rounded little chin, and part of a cheek flushed like an early rose. But all at once he recoiled as though scorched, for all at once he had remembered that he had not a nose on him, but nothing at all. So, with tears forcing themselves upwards, he wheeled about to tell the uniformed gentleman that he, the uniformed gentleman, was no State Alexis Sanchez Drakt Councillor, but an impostor Maillot Écosse Pas CHer and a knave and a villain Franck Ribery Drakt a |
