At the Ice Cream Parlor

A child yawned as he stared at her from his solitary table in a moment of desperate invisibility.

"Ugly, frightful thing," he thought to himself, 
despite the surge in his breast of undeniable envy.

Flea Market

"Troublesome, troublesome," mumbled the grey-bearded Dutchman. He was fingering the umbrellas of cartoonish figurines on the display counter of a vendor's booth.

Fixing his eyes on one alike in every way to the others there, he abruptly snatched the thing from its place and scurried into an indifferent crowd.

The Revelation

The woman announced to her husband,
"I have resigned myself to this conclusion:
my stomach is not your stomach.
If you are hungry and I eat, you will not get full."

For the hapless man, it was a startling disappointment.
He quivered in fear.