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“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 carving-knife in the other.

“What do you mean by insulting my wife?” he demanded.

“Was that your wife?” asked the Woggle-Bug, 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 Woggle-Bug and hurting him with the knife and pistol. But the Woggle-Bug 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 carving-knife 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 Woggle-Bug’s admiration. “I’ll never wear it again!” she said to her husband, when he came in and told her that the Woggle-Bug 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 Woggle-Bug, 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 Woggle-Bug 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 Woggle-Bug, 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 Woggle-bug 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 Woggle-Bug 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 Woggle-Bug 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.