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It was the beginning of another day for Molly Moo-Milk, the intrepid investigative reporter. Her newest mission was to go undercover and dig up the dirt on a boorish mountebank who surely was cheating his customers. Molly was about to infiltrate his company as a new employee, but first, she had to peruse the personal ads, a daily ritual of hers.
At the office, Dr. Fake (the charlatan) greeted Molly laconically, simply uttering "Hi." This made Molly deeply suspicious of him as she distrusted people of few words since she herself was a loquacious beanie. He handed her an abacus and told her to get to work.
"What am I supposed to do?!! You just hand me an abacus and I'm expected to know what to do with it?!!" Molly waved the abacus around.
Dr. Fake simply shrugged and went off to the corner to play his dulcimer.
"At least teach me how to work this thing!" Molly yelled to him.
"That's not germane," he replied and went back to ignoring her.
Molly stared at the abacus for a few minutes, looked at Dr. Fake, looked back at the abacus, and finally, out of frustration, grabbed a truncheon that was conveniently nearby and set out to extirpate the abacus. "Take that! And that!" she yelled, believing the abacus fully condigned and wishing she could do the same to Dr. Fake. Dr. Fake remained phlegmatic in the corner, having fallen asleep after being worn out by Molly's histrionics.
Molly sat down on the floor after getting a feeling of vertigo. She looked over to see Dr. Fake's reaction to her little display and was petulant when she discovered it had gone pretty much unnoticed.
"Well, I'm done with the abacus," Molly told the doctor, who had woken up. She threw the pieces of the abacus across the room at him.
"Will you shut up? I'm trying to concentrate here, and your raucous voice isn't helping me focus!" Dr. Fake glared at her.
"My voice raucous?!!" Molly exclaimed. Her face grew as sanguine as her dress.
"Of all the people who applied, I had to pick a termagant." Dr. Fake made a face.
Molly inveighed against his insults. "I am not a termagant! And you're corpulent! You need to be more abstemious!"
Dr. Fake looked at his beer belly and responded, yelling, "Well, you're inept! You can't even work an abacus!"
"Oh yeah? Well, your business is going to face a debacle as soon as I expose you for the mountebank you are!"
Dr. Fake immediately became obsequious and began to dole out the blandishments. "Did I say inept? I meant incredibly talented. You are the epitome of skill. And that perfume you're wearing is quite redolent."
However, Molly's anger was not assuaged and the compliments were not ameliorating her mood. She remained acrimonious and still felt a huge feeling of animus towards the doctor.
Even though Molly kept giving him the evil eye, Dr. Fake tried to keep up his adulation of her. "As soon as I met you, I knew you were erudite even though our interview was ephemeral. I also felt an aura of urbanity emanating from you. Plus, you are a model of decorum."
When he finished talking, Molly looked at Dr. Fake superciliously and also studied his expression carefully. She was able to descry that all he had said was a desperate attempt to get on her good side so she would not reveal how his business was a sham.