“How is it?” I said sympathetically. “Does it hurt?”
The waking heads set up a clamor in Hellenic Greek and woke up a head that knew Russian.
“It’s awful, how it hurts,” it said. The rest stopped talking and stared at me.
I looked the finger over. It was dirty and swollen and not broken. It was simply sprained. In our gymnasium we fixed such a trauma without benefit of a doctor. I grasped the finger and jerked it toward me with all my might. Briareus howled with all of his fifty throats and fell back.
“There, there,” I said, wiping my bands with a handkerchief. “it’s all over…”
Briareus, sniveling through all his noses, peered at his finger. The near heads eagerly stretched their necks, biting the ones in front on the ears in their impatience, so they would not obstruct their view. Al
