Her husband, as she
paused to look in at his door, greeted her:
"Had a good time?"
She could not answer.
He yawned, delicately. He was seated at his mirror, arranging his wringing
wet permanent in serried rows by means of tiny combs.
"Gooooo--oooo--oo--d night," he said.
That was all. Yet she was kinda mad.
* * * * *
A footle, twaddly love affair! No art. A silly little dumpling smattering
with a brute beast.
"No, he is not! He has noble impulses--ragpicking--inspired! His eyes were
misty when he spoke of it--
"A way out of Butterfly Thenter!
"A ragpicker's cart--
"A way out--"
Petticoat held her up.
"You seem a bit gone on that tin-type fellow, Sproggins."
"Yop. Maybe I'd better go to Atlantic Thity for a while."
"Oh, no, you stay here. A lady's place is in the home."
* * * * *
So she was fairly thrown at Porgie.
Another downpour of fate. And Warble, caught without an umbrella or
rubbers.
The night came unheralded.
Petticoat had gone to Iva Payne's on an urgent summons--over-ripe
sardines--and Warble had wandered out into the moonlight.
Petticoat, out of his new wealth, had, like Kubla Khan in Xanadu, a stately
pleasure dome decreed, and in this new architectural triumph, where water
lilies and swans floated on the surface of a deep black pool, Warble
restlessly tossed in a welter of golden cushions, changing her position
every ten seconds.
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