Ain't Angie Awful!/Chapter 8
CHAPTER VIII.
THE ADVENTURE OF THE DUMB DECEIVER
AT twenty-one, most girls you know know little, so little they little know how little they know. If you don’t believe this, try it on your piano. Angela Bish inherited her double-zero intellect from her father who, before his vaccination was a middle-aged mud-eater of the Orinoco. However little she knew, however, she knew she knew little. And this she had acquired by painful inexperience.
Angie had never thought of anything less important than marriage, if anything can be less important. But marriage had never taken Angie seriously. It had never taken her at all. It had only winked at her, like a blueheaded fireman on a hose cart, as it hurtled past.
And yet Angie wasn’t bad looking, really. Why should she be? She wasn’t really bad. Her black eyes curled naturally, and her hair was heavily plated with gold. Why then did men shun her as if she were taking 
IT WAS AN UNEASY SEASICK FEELING THAT THERE WAS SOMEBODY UNDER THE BED
One day, and, curiously enough it happens to be the very day of which we are speaking, Angie awoke with a presentiment that her luck had changed. It wasn’t merely that she found a comforter on the bed with her. She was used to that; and besides, its patchwork was too old and ragged to comfort her any longer. No, it was an uneasy, seasick feeling that there was somebody under the bed. Why, otherwise, should her mattress be heaving up and down as if she were crossing the English Channel in a bathtub? Also, strange, muffled sounds came from amidships, and the springs sprang, as if Father were searching for a collar button or a lost will.
Now, although to Angie it all seemed too good to be true, the prudish may consider it too true to be good. But, at all events, the facts, like the person under the bed, must come out. And so, after removing a few old shoes, an adding machine and a cat’s coffin, Angie beheld grinning at her a handsome face and foot. At least he was handsome to Angie—any man would be, were he grinning at her. Usually they frowned and asked her bitterly if she were a relic of the Great War.
Despite the happiness that had thus come
HARDLY A PROPER COSTUME IN WHICH TO RECEIVE GENTLEMEN AT 7 A.M.
into her life, Angela was in a quandary—hardly a proper costume in which to receive gentlemen at seven a. m. She felt it quite too early to reveal the bare facts of her simple life. Luckily, however, unless the gentleman under the bed had a periscope she was comparatively safe from observation, except for her feet. They were superlatively safe, for, having water on the knees, Angie always wore rubber boots to bed.
In the twinkling of an ear she had disguised her true self in an inveterate green kimono, and she was ready to explore the fastnesses of the hall bedroom. But Angela was proud, though practical. Would she stoop to coax him forth? Not she. She lay flat on her tum. The poor girl who had had few opportunities in her life to pull a man’s leg now eagerly embraced the opportunity and a pair of brilliant trousers. Out they came, and a body, several arms and the grin with them. But the excitement was too great for a girl already weakened by hangnails, and for a time she feared that she would be prostrated by the violent attack of goose-flesh she now enjoyed.
The foregoing events occurred in far less time than it has taken me to tell them; but, you see, they were in a hurry. I am not.
Her visitor, for such, upon investigation, he proved to be, wore an officer’s uniform. If he were not a colonel he was at least a nut. Notwithstanding the fact that bright red trousers and cast iron collars are not being worn with blue embroidered jackets this season, he seemed to Angie to be a gentleman. True, he wore no shoes, but so long as he kept two feet away from her she didn’t mind.
The elegant and refined way in which he sucked a tube of tooth paste she offered him, showed careful breeding; and, when he accepted the cold cream, Angie was pleased to observe that he did not eat it with his fingers. He used his mouth, with the occasional aid of a few toes and a shoe horn to get out the very last of it.
This at last finished, Angie presented him with a cigar. It was practically a new one, never having been smoked but once.
But talk he simply would not. He was as devoid of conversation as an American Indian having his tonsils filled. Whatcared Angela! Blissfully she squatted on her single-barrelled bed; and, as he idly dipped her switch in the mucilage and smiled up sympathetically, she told her new-found friend of her trials and convictions at the Artificial Egg factory where she now worked; and how, every day, when the eggs were shelled, she aged them for the market, escorting the young and giddy ones to public banquets and musical comedies to give them that world-weary flavor which made them feel so thoroughly at home on a slice of fried restaurant ham.
Yes, for the first time that day Angie was falling in love. Cast no aspirin upon her, dear reader. She had no mother to guide her and caution her never to marry a man who didn’t keep a Ford and a butler. She was only a poor working girl into whose life there had come an unexpected gleam of raspberry, whose little heart was tingling, like a telephone bell ringing, ringing the wrong number. She was fond and foolish and freckled; and such, beloved brethren, are ever the victims of the bounder and the book agent. Thus endeth the First Lesson.
But we are getting away from the handsome stranger, something which Angie certainly was not. She had not only fallen in love, but into his arms.
He seemed to take her entree as a matter of course, and said nothing in some strange guttural language. But, by the twitching of his huge Transylvanian ears, Angie was aware that he was running a temperature.
For several minutes nobody breathed in the room.
Outside, the little birds on the telegraph wires looked in at the moving picture and smiled at one another. Some even wept. Then they flew down into the street and simply raved over a stale pretzel, ten days dead. That just shows how shallow and unfeeling birds are. They don’t really care.
But if I don’t separate my two lovers pretty quickly, the infuriated man charging upstairs certainly will. For his charges are getting higher and higher; and he is now at the top floor.
******
As Angie came up for air she saw, standing in and about the doorway a human Hindenburg, as ugly as a restaurant waiter presenting a check for $17.75. He was in a fury and a plaid suit.
“Mungo, come here!”
His master’s voice! Angela’s sweetheart shrivelled like a quail on toast. For a moment, as he stood there, his small brown eyes shining like half-gone coughdrops, she thought he would prove himself a man. Her hero! But, catching sight of a slender graceful form concealed behind the intruder, his devotion began to bag at the knees, and finally, tempted beyond his appetite, he surrendered.
A pang of jealousy, hot as a Mohammedan hell, smote Angela. So she had a rival—and, of course, a blonde! One of the only gents she had ever loved had left her; for a banana. Not even for a red one, either, just an ordinary yellow three-for-ten! How terribly men’s passions could sway them!
Yet she would not give him up; she could not. “You shall not take him from me,” she wailed, “as if he were merely measles! I love him! I found him under the bed and he is mine!” Her gestures were almost improbable.
But the stern intruder, being a Vaudeville manager, knew, of course, how to act. Snap! The fetters were fastened to our handsome hero’s collar.
“And now, young woman,” said he, with grotesque variations in D natural, “you’ll have to come along with me, too! It’s no use weeping, I am stone deaf. I’m going to have you sent up for trying to steal my trained chimpanzee!”
It was in the cool cloisters of the County Jail, therefore, that Angela Bish realized how little she knew—especially of men. Again her heavy heart had caused her to turn turtle dove. But although her life and her cheeks had grown colorless, she did not repaint. The love light had faded from her eyes; hut then, she could wear tortoise shell spectacles.
No, her love affair had proved quite otherwise, but everyone had a flivver, nowadays; and, after all, what was life without a few regrets? She didn’t know. She didn’t even know what life was with them. The things Angie didn’t know were increasing every day.