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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 Woggle-Bug 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 Woggle-Bug, 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 this one was such a big-bug and so handsomely dressed that she saw no harm in encouraging him–especially as the men she had sought to captivate were proving exceedingly shy.

“So you tank Ay I ban loavely?” she asked, with a coy glance at the Insect.

“I do! With all my heart I do!” protested the Woggle-Bug, placing all four hands, one after another, over that beating organ.

“Das mak plenty trouble by you. I don’d could be yours!” sighed the widow, indeed regretting her admirer was not an ordinary man.

“Why not?” asked the Woggle-Bug. “I have still the seven ninety-three; and as that was the original price, and you are now slightly worn and second-handed, I do not see why I need despair of calling you my own.”

It is very queer, when we think of it, that the Woggle-Bug could not separate the wearer of his lovely gown from the gown itself. Indeed, he always made love directly to the costume that had so enchanted him, without any regard whatsoever to the person inside it; and the only way we can explain this remarkable fact is to recollect that the Woggle-Bug was only a woggle-bug, and nothing more could be expected of him. The widow did not, of course, understand his speech in the least; but she gathered the fact that the Woggle-Bug had id money, so she sighed and hinted that she was very hungry, and that there was a good short-order restaurant just outside the park.