Page:Burgess--Aint Angie awful.djvu/54

48 Another instinct, and she was in his arms. Isn’t human nature wonderful, Gertrude? At one moment you are in heaven waited on by pink angels, and the next, some one has  tried to borrow four dollars—and succeeded. And then, when your spirits are covered with green mold and infested with crawling things, lo, a friend appears out of Nowhere and offers you a position as companion to a beautiful and wealthy young French girl at a salary of $3,000 a month and cigarettes. Isn’t that true? Anyway, I’ll say so.

But I was speaking, you may remember, of our foolish heroine.

That embrace was a revelation of rapture to Angie, who still had an amateur rating. How beardy his beard was!—and his hands were soft and cold and moist. At first she thought they were raw oysters. She had always loved oysters, always would. She was happier than she had been since she ate her first hair sandwich. Nevertheless, we must not leave her too long in the embrace of an imperfect stranger.

“I have found you at last!” With difficulty the words came through the thick