Page:Burgess--Aint Angie awful.djvu/57

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THE MAD PAPER-HANGER
51

to know that it was at least dining-room paper.

Yet even then Angie was not satisfied. And finally, in her despair, she cried, “At least yon might wash your beard, O my love, and then when I kiss you perhaps I wouldn’t be so stuck on you!”

The paper hanger was aqueduct to the occasion.

Maddened by the world-old cry, “Do you love me? Don’t you love me?” he arose and pasted her over and over with layer upon layer of the most expensive wall papers. Then, when she was quite covered with the pink cretonne, he pasted her up in front of the back-parlor wall which was decorated with a similar pattern. There, thank God, she was for a while invisible, though still from her camouflage came weak, wan peeps of love.

That day Angela did the hardest work she had ever done. She thought. And when she had clawed herself loose, her mind was made up like an Upper 7. This time he should not escape her!

Hiding in the oven of the lofty range, where he had forced her to sleep o’ nights,