Page:Burgess--Aint Angie awful.djvu/98

92 For several minutes nobody breathed in the room.

Outside, the little birds on the telegraph wires looked in at the moving picture and  smiled at one another. Some even wept. Then they flew down into the street and simply raved over a stale pretzel, ten days dead. That just shows how shallow and unfeeling birds are. They don’t really care.

But if I don’t separate my two lovers pretty quickly, the infuriated man charging upstairs certainly will. For his charges are getting higher and higher; and he is now at the top floor.

As Angie came up for air she saw, standing in and about the doorway a human Hindenburg, as ugly as a restaurant waiter presenting a check for $17.75. He was in a fury and a plaid suit.

“Mungo, come here!”

His master’s voice! Angela’s sweetheart shrivelled like a quail on toast. For a moment, as he stood there, his small brown eyes shining like half-gone coughdrops, she  thought he would prove himself a man. Her hero! But, catching sight of a slender grace-