Page:Burgess--Aint Angie awful.djvu/96

90 being worn with blue embroidered jackets this season, he seemed to Angie to be a gentleman. True, he wore no shoes, but so long as he kept two feet away from her she didn’t mind.

The elegant and refined way in which he sucked a tube of tooth paste she offered him, showed careful breeding; and, when he accepted the cold cream, Angie was pleased to observe that he did not eat it with his fingers. He used his mouth, with the occasional aid of a few toes and a shoe horn to get out the very last of it.

This at last finished, Angie presented him with a cigar. It was practically a new one, never having been smoked but once.

But talk he simply would not. He was as devoid of conversation as an American Indian having his tonsils filled. Whatcared Angela! Blissfully she squatted on her single-barrelled bed; and, as he idly dipped her switch in the mucilage and smiled up  sympathetically, she told her new-found  friend of her trials and convictions at the  Artificial Egg factory where she now worked; and how, every day, when the eggs were  shelled, she aged them for the market, escort-