CHAPTER IV.
THE ADVENTURE OF THE MAD PAPER-HANGER
NOT long did Angela Bish remain in her mackintoshes. She had tasted Romance à la subway.
For two days, now, she had winked, in the 199th Street Station, at a melancholy man in a slimy overcoat whose beard was full of big white blobs. He had smiled at her, she fancied; although, between you and me and the chewing-gum distributing machine, the red paint of which was being hungrily licked off by a half-starved tot, it may have been that misery, alas, too often draws only a smile from the thoughtless.
Be that as it may, let us return to life as it is lived north of 11th Street.
Angie lived on the memory of that smile all day; and at night she warmed it over for supper. Already life had changed for Angie; and, inversely, Angie had changed for life.
The third day, greatly daring, she returned his grin in even better condition than she had found it.
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