“Beg pardon!” he exclaimed, stopping the young lady; “but you’re mine. Here’s the seven ninety-three, and seven cents for candy.”
But she glanced at him in a haughty manner, and walked away with her nose slightly elevated.
He followed. He could not do otherwise with those delightful checks shining before him like beacon-lights to urge him on.
The young lady stepped into a car, which whirled away rapidly. For a moment he was nearly paralyzed at his loss; then he started after the car as fast as he could go, and this was very fast indeed—he being a wogglebug.
Somebody cried: “Stop, thief!” and a policeman ran out to arrest him. But the WoggleBug used his four hands to push the officer aside, and the astonished man went rolling into the gutter so recklessly that his uniform bore marks of the encounter for many days.
Still keeping an eye on the car, the WoggleBug rushed on. He frightened two dogs, upset a fat gentleman who was crossing the street, leaped over an automobile that shot in front of him, and finally ran plump into the car, which had abruptly stopped to let off a passenger. Breathing hard from his exertions, he jumped upon the rear platform of the car, only to see his charmer step off at the front and walk mincingly up the steps of a house. Despite his fatigue, he flew after her at once, crying out:
“Stop, my variegated dear—stop! Don’t you know you’re mine?”
But she slammed the door in his face, and he sat down upon the steps and wiped his forehead with his pink handkerchief and fanned himself with his hat and tried to think what he should do next.
Presently a very angry man came out of the house. He had a revolver in one hand and a carvingknife in the other.
“What do you mean by insulting my wife?” he demanded.
“Was that your wife?” asked the WoggleBug, in meek astonishment.
“Of course it is my wife,” answered the man.
“Oh, I didn’t know,” said the insect, rather humbled. “But I’ll give you seven ninety-three for her. That’s all she’s worth, you know; for I saw it marked on the tag.”
The man gave a roar of rage and jumped into the air with the intention of falling on the WoggleBug and hurting him with the knife and pistol. But the WoggleBug was suddenly in a hurry, and didn’t wait to be jumped on. Indeed, he ran so very fast that the man was content to let him go, especially as the pistol wasn’t loaded and the carvingknife was as dull as such knives usually are.
But his wife had conceived a great dislike for the Wagnerian check costume that had won for her the WoggleBug’s admiration. “I’ll never wear it again!” she said to her husband, when he came in and told her that the WoggleBug was gone.
“Then,” he replied, “you’d better give it to Bridget; for she’s been bothering me about her wages lately, and the present will keep her quite for a month longer.”
So she called Bridget and presented her with the dress, and the delighted servant decided to wear it that night to Mickey Schwartz’s ball.
Now the poor WoggleBug, finding his affection scorned, was feeling very blue and unhappy that evening, When he walked out, dressed (among other things) in a purple-striped shirt, with a yellow necktie and pea-green gloves, he looked a great deal more cheerful than he really was. He had put on another hat, for the WoggleBug had a superstition that to change his hat was to change his luck, and luck seemed to have overlooked the fact that he was in existence.
The hat may really have altered his fortunes, as the Insect shortly met Ikey Swanson, who gave him a ticket to Mickey Schwartz’s ball; for Ikey’s clean dickey had not come home from the laundry, and so he could not go himself.
The WoggleBug, thinking to distract his mind from his dreams of love, attended the hall, and the first thing he saw as he entered the room was Bridget clothed in that same gorgeous gown of Wagnerian plaid that had so fascinated his bugly heart.
The dear Bridget had added to her charms by putting seven full-blown imitation roses and three second-hand ostrich-plumes in her red hair; so that her entire person glowed like a sunset in June.
The Wogglebug was enraptured; and, although the divine Bridget was waltzing with Fritzie Casey, the Insect rushed to her side and, seizing her with all his four arms at once, cried out in his truly educated Bostonian way:
“Oh, my superlative conglomeration of beauty! I have found you at last!”
Bridget uttered a shriek, and Fritzie Casey doubled two fists that looked like tombstones, and advanced upon the intruder.
Still embracing the plaid costume with two arms, the WoggleBug tipped Mr. Casey over with the other two. But Bridget made a bound and landed with her broad heel, which supported 180 pounds, firmly upon the Insect’s toes. He gave a yelp of pain and promptly released the lady, and a moment later he found himself flat upon the floor with a dozen of the dancers piled upon him—all of whom were pummeling each other with much pleasure and a firm conviction that the diversion had been planned for their special amusement.
But the WoggleBug had the strength of many men, and when he flopped the big wings that were concealed by the tails of his coat, the gentlemen resting upon him were scattered like autumn leaves in a gust of wind.
The Insect stood up, rearranged his dress, and looked about him. Bridget had run away and gone home, and the others were still fighting amongst themselves with exceeding cheerfulness. So the WoggleBug selected a hat which fit him (his own having been crushed out of shape) and walked sorrowfully back to his lodgings.
“Evidently that was not a lucky hat I wore to the ball,” he reflected; “but perhaps this one I now have will bring about a change in my fortunes.”
Bridget needed money; and as she had worn her brilliant costume once and allowed her friends to see how becoming it was, she carried it the next morning to a second-hand dealer and sold it for three dollars in cash.
Scarcely had she left the shop when a lady of Swedish extraction—a widow with four small children in her train—entered and asked to look at a gown. The dealer showed her the one he had just bought from Bridget, and its gay coloring so pleased the widow that she immediately purchased it for $3.65.
“Ay tank ets a good deal money, by sure,” she said to herself; “but das leedle children mus’ have new fadder to mak mind un tak care dere mudder like, by yimminy! An’ Ay tank no man look may way in das ole dress I been wearing.”
She took the gown and the four children to her home, where she lost no time in trying on the costume, which fitted her as perfectly as a flour-sack does a peck of potatoes.
“Das beau—tiful!” she exclaimed, in rapture, as she tried to see herself in a cracked mirror. “Ay go das very afternoon to valk in da park, for das man-folks go crazy-like ven he sees may fine frocks!”
Then she took her green parasol and a hand-bag stuffed with papers (to make it look prosperous and aristocratic) and sallied forth to the park, followed by all her interesting flock.
The men didn’t fail to look at her, as you may guess; but none looked with yearning until the WoggleBug, sauntering gloomily along a path, happened to raise his eyes and see before him his heart’s delight the very identical Wagnerian plaids which had filled him with such unbounded affection.
“Aha, my excruciatingly lovely creation!” he cried, running up and kneeling before the widow; “I have found you once again. Do not, I beg of you, treat me with coldness!”
For he had learned from experience not to unduly startle his charmer at their first moment of meeting; so he made a firm attempt to control himself, that the wearer of the checked gown might not scorn him.
The widow had no great affection for bugs, having wrestled with the species for many years; but