Ain't Angie Awful!. Frank Gelett Burgess
have been her conscience strings—and without the slightest effort she discovered that she could say it.
“Damn!”
Sobbing, half with regret, Angela knew that her childhood was over. She was free, free!—free to break hearts and pocketbooks, free to wear long red earrings forever and forever—perhaps afterwards; who knows! In the ecstasy of ewomancipation she drank half a bottle of cologne and smoked two whole Chinese punk sticks. She was free, free!
Joyously she set out for the six-cent store, on the corner of 13th and 25th Streets, West.
Who would have suspected that, diagonally above that little turn, there beat a heart filled with naughty joy? Back of those black eyes were thinks that would have made Rabelais weep. Yes, such was Angie that morning, if not sucher.
And behold, at 11.11, again He appeared where the hard hardware counter concealed the southern half of our little friend A. Bish. Her hero! The same plaid suit with the same dear spots, the same half-smoked cigar, the same sweet old breath, embalmed in peppermint, as per always.
SHE GAVE HIM A LITTLE TWO-FOR-FIVE SMILE
Over the top she cast her eyes. He caught them.
“I say, girlie, how much are these?”
“Can’t you read? Everything on this counter is six cents.”
“What, everything?”
“Yes, everything!” How simple are the truly great dramatic moments of life.
A red light flared in his eyes. “Then I’ll take you!"
For a moment, perhaps for only a jiffy, Angie swooned. Love’s hour had struck ONE! Then, ringing up his six cents, she gave a last look about at these to-be-forgotten scenes of her infancy, and calmly wrapped herself up in brown paper.
“Here you are,” she said, firmly knotting the string about her waist. What she meant was, “Here I am!” But he understood. At such moments there is little need for words. One’s instinct speaks.
In another minute he was outside the store, and Angie, trembling like a kangaroo with the flu, felt herself being carried down, down, down into the Subway. Then all was dark, dark!
******
Three hours later, in a gorglorious apartment on the 101st floor of the Asdorf Waltoria, Angela regained consciousness, although her brain still reeled with the stupefying fumes of peppermint and romance. Her hero was gloating over his happy victim. Strewn about the room she counted several thousand cigar butts.
“Who are you?” she murmured loudly, “and why hast you took me here?”
“I am a manufacturer of tobacco ashes,” was his reply, “and I need somebody to sift them and pack them into silver cans.”
“WHY HAST THOU BROUGHT ME HERE?”
But life, dear reader, is not always one unbroken rosary of rapture. Not at all, or seldom. Some pearls are tears. Wherefore Angela’s virtue was to remain to bore her for many, many years. Hardly had she begun rapturously to fear the worst, when came a loud rap at the door. Her hero turned pale, but, hastily and yet resolutely donning a pair of purple suspenders, he flung wide the portal.
Alas, there stood there, there did, with evil in his eyes, Mr. Burleson T. Woodrow, the proprietor of the six-cent store.
With evil in his eyes he cried the one word, “Give her back, you robber! Give her back!”
And, so saying this, he held before the Hero’s horrified gaze a small lead token. A little thing it was, small and round, hardly littler than a glass eye; but it had power to change Angela’s destiny. With one long, swift glance, she saw that her doom was sealed. Back she must go, back to the slavery of the hard, hard, hardware counter again. In one moment all her innocent dreams of vice had gefled.
“Oh, dammit!” she whispered.
HE FLUNG WIDE THE PORTAL
How little we know when a new accomplishment may prove useful!
For B. T. Woodrow held, in that large lobster-like hand, a counterfeit six-cent piece!
The Adventure of the Peanivorous Rit
CHAPTER II.
THE ADVENTURE OF THE PEANIVOROUS RIT
ANGELA was now only sixteen. But what does that matter, when one is young! She held a responsible position in a Swedish match factory. She it was who, when the matches were all finished, dipped the tips in water to make sure they would not light.
Would I might describe her sloe-black, fast-black hair, her high-brow eyebrows, her nice cool high-school eyes whose pupils were always playing truant whenever she winked. But I see you are not listening. You want me to resume the offensive, with a capital offense.
Well then, although Angie was as happy as a fried egg, her friend Conscience had begun to tell her, “You’re another!”
For the Soul, beloved brethren, hath also its traffic cops, warning us at all life’s crossroads, “GO” or “STOP.” But somehow, whenever Angie’s conscience showed green she was apt to see red.
“Fat gentlemen with side whiskers,” it was now whispering, “who present young girls with popcorn and peanuts on the Elevated trains are nice, but naughty.” But, though he had his neck shaved, he was wealthy, and could evidently afford it. If, then, he choose to drop buttered popcorn
and peanuts down the back of her neck, why shouldn’t she accept the gifts in the spirit in which they were given? For they were given in the very highest of spirits.
Angela’s view of life, you see, was a little cross-eyed. She should, of course, have kicked him gently in the face and then called upon the handiest marine hard by to finish him up and spit him out the window. If she couldn’t find a marine—and sometimes one can’t, although they are the first to fight—she might, at the nearest jewelers, at least have got an aquamarine.
But instead, she gave him a little two-for-five smile (you should have seen one of her large 85c ones, when she was lapping up a cucumber sundae!) and coyly mentioned telephone number. It wasn’t hers, really though; it belonged to the undertaker on ground floor—and that was a funny thing, too, for Angie had often said she wouldn’t be found dead in his shop.
One day the undertaker who was always undertaking people, undertook to call her down to the phone. Angie always hated to be called down, but condescending she descended. It was her fat friend; she knew it was, because she could smell peanuts in the receiver.
“Say, meet me at the Ritz, will you, Peacho? Right away!”
Angela frowned.