UTIE, our little warm mamma, was decorating the flesh-pots this happy evening. Two lounge serpents named Morris and Bartlett had taken her to the Rainbo Gardens where there was a snake dance going on.
At ten o’clock Morris had taken the count and Bartlett was sitting with his dogs hanging out of the window to cool. Cutie, however, was still in the ring.
Our little twelve-cylinder butterfly had attracted a great deal of attention. As a dancer Cutie had Ruth St. Denis looking like a matzos peddler. St. Vitus himself would have copped fourth prize as a study in still life alongside of her. Nothing but a slow motion camera could do Cutie justice when she let her manners slip.
Among the side line sheiks who were K. Oing our quicksilver stepper was Herman Pupick, the celebrated censor and reformer. Herman was in disguise. He was wearing a large black mustache and a pair of green spats. From a short distance Herman looked like a laboratory specimen playing hookey.
Our hero had sneaked into the Garden in answer to the call of duty. Since his visit to Dr. Kukuheimer he had been working over-time censoring and reforming in a mad effort to put Cutie out of his mind.
While this Nature’s Blunder was taking notes on the low stuff happening before his one eye, he suddenly let out a stifled squawk. Cutie herself had sailed past him.
At first Herman thought it was all a dream. He pinched himself to see if he was awake. But he was dead from the neck both ways so it didn’t count. In the meantime, Cutie had discovered our hero. She penetrated his disguise at a glance. You can hide a light under a bushel but it is much harder for a pole-cat to conceal himself.
“My Gawd!” cried Cutie, turning in her tracks, “If it ain’t nature’s little nobleman, Mr. Pupick.”
Herman rose with the dignity of a lumbago victim.
“How do you do?” he replied in a hushed voice and held out his fin. Our heroine shook it and for a minute she thought somebody had slipped her a dead eel.
“I am grieved,” spoke Herman, “to see you pursuing your sinful course in this manner. I had hoped that our last meeting would cause you to see the error of your ways.”
“Why the shredded wheat over the kisser?” inquired our heroine eyeing the false mustache. “Take ’em off, poison ivy, before somebody throws you into a tank with the rest of the walruses.”
Our hero felt a little dizzy but his duty remained plain.
“It would give me great pleasure,” he said, “to take you out of this place and bring you home to your parents.”
Cutie felt a sudden curiosity.
“Come on, Mr. Pupick,” she invited him, “let’s crawl.”
Herman found himself oozing out of his chair. He was in a trance. He made a last effort and tried to steady himself by thinking of Mrs. Pupick. But all he could remember about her was that her knees looked like a couple of pineapples.
Our hero crossed his good eye and let himself go. The music was raising hell with his complexes. When Cutie put her arms around him she thought she had grabbed hold of a sack of cement.
“You are making a mistake,” our heroine grunted, “the idea is that we are going to have a dance, not a tug of war.”
But Herman was beyond the power of reason. As his smeller leaned against Cutie’s corn colored hair, he let out one gasp and swallowed his false mustache. When he felt our little mamma’s shimmy begin to shake, Herman thought a bolt of lightning was playing a tattoo on him. For a few minutes this flat wheeled caboose of gloom couldn’t figure out which part of him was his feet.
“What’s the matter?” Cutie whispered, “you are behaving like a clam diver with the hiccoughs. Have you lost control?”
Herman didn’t know exactly what was being said. He had grown so hot that his glass eye was beginning to melt around the edges. Just then the management turned the lights down and everything became green.
“Oh, God,” our hero groaned. And then all he knew was that somebody had tied him to a pin wheel as big as a barn door and set a match to it. He was going good at the rate of seven hundred revolutions to the second when somebody else shoved a bomb down his throat and he blew up.