HEN Herman recovered what a practical joker would call his senses he found himself in a taxi cab. He felt something was terribly wrong. Opening his glim he saw Cutie. She was wiping his face with a sponge.
“Where am I?” murmured our hero.
“You are safe for the time being,” Cutie answered, “if the posse don’t locate our tracks.”
Herman shuddered and realized that he was covered with blood. He looked like a tomato somebody had thrown away.
“What has happened?” he groaned.
“Plenty,” our little first aid replied. “You are certainly a rough worker. Where was you raised, in a spittoon? It is too bad you left your pick at home on the mantlepiece, or you might have been more successful in your love making.”
“Love making,” moaned Herman. “Oh, my God, what have I done?”
“Yes,” continued Cutie, “we are dancing pretty when all of a sudden right in front of everybody you let out a terrible yell and fasten your horse teeth in my ear. Then, before I can get a good hold, you pull a half nelson on me and I am down for the count when the bouncers step in. One of them whams you on the skull with a near beer bottle and the other does a buck and wing on your neck. But little Herman, the Boy Scout, won’t give up. All you do is sink your teeth in my shoulder and make noises like a basket full of hungry pooches. Well, they finally tore you from my clutches after the riot call had been sent in and they had you stretched out on the curbing waiting for the booby wagon when this taxi creeps into sight and I shove you in and here we are, fleeing the angry posse which is threatening to dip you in oil and set fire to you without further argument.”
When Herman Pupick heard this he grabbed hold of his head and moaned like a lost soul.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
“Well,” said Cutie, “we will stop first at my little love nest and lay up for a few repairs. You look as if you had just escaped from a lunatic asylum full of Swiss bell ringers. After we have restored some of your face and removed the rest of it we will make plans for the future.”
A half hour later Herman was lying on a couch in a room that smelled like the eau de cologne department of Marshall Field’s. Our heroine had bandaged him up till he looked like a second hand patch work quilt.
Herman was just about to thank her when he happened to look at the table next to him. On that table in plain view were all the books he had suppressed in the last ten years.
This terrible sight restored our hero to himself. Staggering to his feet he let out the famous Pupick war cry and fell upon the dreadful volumes.
“How dare you?” he cried, “fill your home with such lewd and obscene books as these? Don’t you know they are corrupt and dangerous influences? No young girl should be allowed to handle them.”
Wounded though he was, our hero seized the literature which his pure soul found so offensive and tore it into shreds. When he got through, the room looked as if a nanny goat had been sleeping in it.
Just as our bruised and battered killjoy had finished his job, Cutie appeared in the doorway. She was a little overdressed for a Ziegfield chorus, but nobody in their right mind would have barred her out of a school for the blind. She was holding a pair of large lavender pajamas with fancy buttons on the jacket, in her hand. When she saw the room full of torn paper she came to a full stop and sighed.
“My Gawd,” she muttered, “he’s gone cuckoo again. Say,” she said aloud, “come out of it, Ophelia. You have had a large evening and there’s no use trying to stage an encore at this hour. Here, I think this sleeping bag will just fit you.”
And our little life restorer held up the lavender pajamas.
Herman Pupick stood with his one eye riveted on his hostess as if she were the chariot scene from Ben Hur.