Page:Burgess--Aint Angie awful.djvu/102

96 she wanted was Someone to murmur soft, sweet, sticky things in her hair, and to let her lay her loving skull on his vest pocket beside the fountain pen—His fountain pen!—while, in the gloaming, they read together “How to be Happy, though Sober.”

This was her dream; but alas, dreams go. And when they go, they usually go by contraries. And so, Angie had long been saving up for a phonograph. That seemed to be the only virtuous way she could ever be thrilled by hearing a smooth-shaven voice passionately baritoning to her “You are the very gooiest girl in all the glad New York!”

In her fond impatience she had already purchased this classic song-record; and she had thirty-one cents saved up in her mustache cup for the phonograph. Often, in the longing, lingering evenings, she sadly attempted to play the disc herself with a cambric needle. But it was unsatisfactory. Finally, in despair, she threw it out the window, and hit a Scandinavian tinsmith. He seemed to be so much struck by her that it consoled her a little.

But not much. Melancholy came back with the mosquitoes, both male and female.