Page:Burgess--Aint Angie awful.djvu/31

Rh 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.