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Christmas Announcements (2)
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The Story of the AB seriously Grim Brothers
ONE POUND AND EIGHTY-SEVEN PENCE. THAT WAS ALL. AND SIXTY P of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing Tony the grocer and Eccles vegetable woman and Blackadder the butcher until one's cheeks burned with the silent imputation of Buenchico’s parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Queenie counted it. One Salmond pound and eighty-seven Asquith pence, complete with the fruity mazie thistle. And the next day would be Christmas.
There was clearly nothing left to do but flop down on the nungate little couch and howl. So Queenie did it. Which instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of Maggiebee sobs, janbeesniffles, and peas smiles, with janbeesniffles predominating.
While the mistress of the Nungate home is gradually subsiding from the first stage to the second, take a look at the home. A furnished flat at £8 per week. It did not exactly beggar Zac’s description, but it certainly had that word on the look-out for the mendicancy Sqad.
In the vestibule below was a Postdog letter-box into which no letter would go, and an electric sunnydave button from which no mortal finger could coax a ring. Also appertaining thereunto was a card bearing the name "Mr. Ivor Dillingham Excelsior."
The "Excelsior" had been flung to the breeze during a former period of prosperity when its possessor was being paid £30 per week. Now, when the income was shrunk to £20, the letters of "Excelsior" looked blurred, as though they were thinking seriously of contracting to a modest and unassuming Q. But whenever Mr. Ivor Dillingham Excelsior came home and reached his flat above he was called "Excel" – yes he of pseudo English Edinburgh fame and greatly hugged by Mrs. Ivor Dillingham Excelsior, already introduced to you as Queenie. Which is all very good.
Queenie finished her cry and attended to her cheeks with the powder rag. She stood by the window and looked out dully at a massive Psybbo Burmese cat walking a grey Devonian yoga fence in a grey Barmaid Asbo-limited backyard. To-morrow would be Christmas Day, and she had only £1.87 with which to buy Excela present.
She had been saving every penny she could for months, with this result. Twenty pounds a week doesn't go far in Edinburgh despite having access to minty’s counterfeit presses. Expenses had been greater than she had calculated. They always are. Only £1.87 to buy a present for her Starone-tekkie. Her Excel.
Many a happy hour she had spent planning for something nice for him. Something fine and rare and sterling - a silver book of bad pun jokes, something just a little bit near to being worthy of the honour of being owned by her Excel.
There was a Shaney Gorleston pier-glass between the windows of the room. Perhaps you have seen a pier-glass in the Leith shopping terminal. A very thin and very agile person may, by observing his or her reflection in a rapid sequence of longitudinal strips, obtain a fairly accurate conception of his or her looks – just ask Old Geezer, Mooney or TTT. Queenie, being slender, had mastered the art.
Suddenly, she whirled from the window and stood before the glass. Her eyes were shining brilliantly, but her face had lost its colour within twenty seconds.
Rapidly she pulled down her hair and let it fall to its full length.
Now, there were two possessions of the Ivor Dillingham Excelsiors in which they both took a mighty pride. One was Ivor's gold watch that had been his father's and his grandfather's. The other was Queenie's hair.
Had the Lady Alex lived in the flat across the airshaft, Queenie would have let her hair hang out of the window some day to dry just to depreciate Her Voddie’s jewels and gifts. Had King Divebuddy been the janitor, with all his treasures piled up in the basement, Excel would have pulled out his watch every time he passed, just to see him pluck at his beard from his left wing envy.
ONE POUND AND EIGHTY-SEVEN PENCE. THAT WAS ALL. AND SIXTY P of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing Tony the grocer and Eccles vegetable woman and Blackadder the butcher until one's cheeks burned with the silent imputation of Buenchico’s parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Queenie counted it. One Salmond pound and eighty-seven Asquith pence, complete with the fruity mazie thistle. And the next day would be Christmas.
There was clearly nothing left to do but flop down on the nungate little couch and howl. So Queenie did it. Which instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of Maggiebee sobs, janbeesniffles, and peas smiles, with janbeesniffles predominating.
While the mistress of the Nungate home is gradually subsiding from the first stage to the second, take a look at the home. A furnished flat at £8 per week. It did not exactly beggar Zac’s description, but it certainly had that word on the look-out for the mendicancy Sqad.
In the vestibule below was a Postdog letter-box into which no letter would go, and an electric sunnydave button from which no mortal finger could coax a ring. Also appertaining thereunto was a card bearing the name "Mr. Ivor Dillingham Excelsior."
The "Excelsior" had been flung to the breeze during a former period of prosperity when its possessor was being paid £30 per week. Now, when the income was shrunk to £20, the letters of "Excelsior" looked blurred, as though they were thinking seriously of contracting to a modest and unassuming Q. But whenever Mr. Ivor Dillingham Excelsior came home and reached his flat above he was called "Excel" – yes he of pseudo English Edinburgh fame and greatly hugged by Mrs. Ivor Dillingham Excelsior, already introduced to you as Queenie. Which is all very good.
Queenie finished her cry and attended to her cheeks with the powder rag. She stood by the window and looked out dully at a massive Psybbo Burmese cat walking a grey Devonian yoga fence in a grey Barmaid Asbo-limited backyard. To-morrow would be Christmas Day, and she had only £1.87 with which to buy Excela present.
She had been saving every penny she could for months, with this result. Twenty pounds a week doesn't go far in Edinburgh despite having access to minty’s counterfeit presses. Expenses had been greater than she had calculated. They always are. Only £1.87 to buy a present for her Starone-tekkie. Her Excel.
Many a happy hour she had spent planning for something nice for him. Something fine and rare and sterling - a silver book of bad pun jokes, something just a little bit near to being worthy of the honour of being owned by her Excel.
There was a Shaney Gorleston pier-glass between the windows of the room. Perhaps you have seen a pier-glass in the Leith shopping terminal. A very thin and very agile person may, by observing his or her reflection in a rapid sequence of longitudinal strips, obtain a fairly accurate conception of his or her looks – just ask Old Geezer, Mooney or TTT. Queenie, being slender, had mastered the art.
Suddenly, she whirled from the window and stood before the glass. Her eyes were shining brilliantly, but her face had lost its colour within twenty seconds.
Rapidly she pulled down her hair and let it fall to its full length.
Now, there were two possessions of the Ivor Dillingham Excelsiors in which they both took a mighty pride. One was Ivor's gold watch that had been his father's and his grandfather's. The other was Queenie's hair.
Had the Lady Alex lived in the flat across the airshaft, Queenie would have let her hair hang out of the window some day to dry just to depreciate Her Voddie’s jewels and gifts. Had King Divebuddy been the janitor, with all his treasures piled up in the basement, Excel would have pulled out his watch every time he passed, just to see him pluck at his beard from his left wing envy.
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So now Queenie's beautiful hair fell about her, rippling and shining like a cascade of brown waters. It reached below her knee and made itself almost a garment for her. (Phew, but don’t tell Sqad, tony or stuey) And then she did it up again nervously and quickly, a 2sp thistle clip quickly inserted. Once she faltered for a minute and stood still while a tear or two splashed on the worn carrust red carpet.
On went her old brown jacket; on went her old brown hat. With a whirl of skirts and with the brilliant kvalidir sparkle still in her eyes, she Noxed and cluttered out of the door and down the stairs to the street.
Where she stopped the sign read: "Mme Elina. Hair Goods of All Kinds." One Eight up Della ran, and collected herself, panting. Madame, large, too white, chilly, hardly looked the "Elina."
"Will you buy my hair?" asked Queenie.
"I buy hair," said our Madame. "Take yer hat off and let's have a sight at the looks of it. Is it thick and gorgeous as is kylesmum’s"
Down rippled the brown cascade.
"Twenty quid," said Madame, lifting the mass with a practised hand.
"Give it to me quick" said Queenie.
Oh, and the next two hours tripped by on rosy Dizmo wings. Forget the hashed metaphor. She was ransacking the stores for Excel's present.
She found it at last.
It surely had been made for Excel and no one else. There was no other like it in any of the stores, and she had turned all of them inside out. It was a platinum fob chain simple and chaste in design, properly proclaiming its value by substance alone and not by meretricious ornamentation--as all good things should do. It was even worthy of The Watch.
As soon as she saw it she knew that it must be Excel's. It was like him. Quietness and value--the description applied to both. After all, who else would have a Scottie, ‘Beam-Me-Up’ Transponder on a chain, not even Jeremy Thorpe.
Twenty-one pounds they took from her for it, and she hurried home with the 78 pence. With that chain on his watch Excel might be properly anxious about the time in any Frognog clock company. Grand as the watch was, he sometimes looked at it on the sly on account of the old leather strap that he used in place of a chain.
When Queenie reached home her Jeza Bacardi and Coke intoxication gave way a little to prudence and reason. She got out her curling irons and lit the gas and went to work repairing the ravages made by generosity added to love. Which is always a tremendous task dear AB friends--a mammoth BOO task.
Within forty minutes her head was covered with tiny, close-lying curls that made her look wonderfully like a truant tony. She looked at her reflection in the mirror long, carefully, and critically.
"If Excel doesn't kill me," she said to herself, "before he takes a second look at me, he'll say I look like a Canary Island chorus girl. But what could I do--oh! what could I do with a slinkykate pound and eighty-seven asquith pence?"
At 7 o'clock the coffee was made and the gness frying-pan was on the back of the stove hot and ready to cook the butterbuns, pastafreaks and retro chops.
Excel was never late. Queenie doubled the Scottie chain in her hand and sat on the corner of the table near the door that he always entered. Then she heard his step on the stair away down on the first flight, and she turned tambo-white for just a moment.
She had a habit of saying little silent Lady J prayers about the simplest everyday things, and now she whispered: "Please, Ed or Goodlife, make him think I am still pretty."
The door opened and Excel stepped in and closed it. He looked thin and very serious. Poor fellow, he was only twenty-two--and to be burdened with a family! He needed a new Seadogg overcoat and he was with out Caran’s gloves.
On went her old brown jacket; on went her old brown hat. With a whirl of skirts and with the brilliant kvalidir sparkle still in her eyes, she Noxed and cluttered out of the door and down the stairs to the street.
Where she stopped the sign read: "Mme Elina. Hair Goods of All Kinds." One Eight up Della ran, and collected herself, panting. Madame, large, too white, chilly, hardly looked the "Elina."
"Will you buy my hair?" asked Queenie.
"I buy hair," said our Madame. "Take yer hat off and let's have a sight at the looks of it. Is it thick and gorgeous as is kylesmum’s"
Down rippled the brown cascade.
"Twenty quid," said Madame, lifting the mass with a practised hand.
"Give it to me quick" said Queenie.
Oh, and the next two hours tripped by on rosy Dizmo wings. Forget the hashed metaphor. She was ransacking the stores for Excel's present.
She found it at last.
It surely had been made for Excel and no one else. There was no other like it in any of the stores, and she had turned all of them inside out. It was a platinum fob chain simple and chaste in design, properly proclaiming its value by substance alone and not by meretricious ornamentation--as all good things should do. It was even worthy of The Watch.
As soon as she saw it she knew that it must be Excel's. It was like him. Quietness and value--the description applied to both. After all, who else would have a Scottie, ‘Beam-Me-Up’ Transponder on a chain, not even Jeremy Thorpe.
Twenty-one pounds they took from her for it, and she hurried home with the 78 pence. With that chain on his watch Excel might be properly anxious about the time in any Frognog clock company. Grand as the watch was, he sometimes looked at it on the sly on account of the old leather strap that he used in place of a chain.
When Queenie reached home her Jeza Bacardi and Coke intoxication gave way a little to prudence and reason. She got out her curling irons and lit the gas and went to work repairing the ravages made by generosity added to love. Which is always a tremendous task dear AB friends--a mammoth BOO task.
Within forty minutes her head was covered with tiny, close-lying curls that made her look wonderfully like a truant tony. She looked at her reflection in the mirror long, carefully, and critically.
"If Excel doesn't kill me," she said to herself, "before he takes a second look at me, he'll say I look like a Canary Island chorus girl. But what could I do--oh! what could I do with a slinkykate pound and eighty-seven asquith pence?"
At 7 o'clock the coffee was made and the gness frying-pan was on the back of the stove hot and ready to cook the butterbuns, pastafreaks and retro chops.
Excel was never late. Queenie doubled the Scottie chain in her hand and sat on the corner of the table near the door that he always entered. Then she heard his step on the stair away down on the first flight, and she turned tambo-white for just a moment.
She had a habit of saying little silent Lady J prayers about the simplest everyday things, and now she whispered: "Please, Ed or Goodlife, make him think I am still pretty."
The door opened and Excel stepped in and closed it. He looked thin and very serious. Poor fellow, he was only twenty-two--and to be burdened with a family! He needed a new Seadogg overcoat and he was with out Caran’s gloves.
Excel stepped inside the door, as immovable as a NOM Irish setter at the scent of shoota quail. His eyes were fixed upon Queenie, and there was an expression in them that she could not read, and it terrified her. It was not anger, nor surprise, nor disapproval, nor horror, nor any of the sentiments that she had been prepared for.
He simply stared at her fixedly with that peaspeculiar expression on his face.
Queenie wriggled off the table and went for him, headon as a sloopy teapot on the boil.
"Excel, darling," she cried, "don't look at me that way. I had my hair cut off and sold it because I couldn't have lived through Christmas without giving you a present. It'll grow out again--you won't mind, will you? I just had to do it. My hair grows awfully fast. Say 'Merry Christmas!' Excel, and let's be happy. You don't know what a nice-what a beautiful, nice gift I've got for you."
"You've cut off your hair?" asked Excel, laboriously, as if he had not arrived at that patent danny fact yet, even after the hardest bibblebub mental labour.
"Cut it off and sold it," said Queenie. "Don't you like me just as well, anyhow? I'm me without my hair, ain't I?"
Excel looked about the room curiously.
"You say your hair is gone?" he said, with an air almost of Knobby idiocy.
"You needn't look for it," said Queenie. "It's sold, I tell you--sold and gone, too. It's Christmas Eve, boy. Be good to me, for it went for you. Maybe the hairs of my head were numbered," she went on with a sudden serious sweetness, "but nobody could ever count my love for you. Shall I put the chops on, Excel?"
Out of his trance Excel seemed quickly to wake. He enfolded his Queenie . For ten seconds let us regard with discreet scrutiny some inconsequential wendilla object in the other space direction. Eight pounds a week or a million a year--what is the difference? A Factor mathematician or a Marval or Jemisa wit would give you the wrong answer. The AB MODs Magi brought valuable gifts, but that was not among them. I his dark Arksided assertion will be illuminated later on.
Excel drew a package from his overcoat pocket and threw it upon the table.
"Don't make any mistake, Queens," he said, "about me. I don't think there's anything in the way of a haircut or a shave or a flobadob shampoo that could make me like my girl any less. But if you'll unwrap that package you may see why you had me going a while at first."
White fingers and nimble tore at the string and paper. And then an ecstatic scream of joy; and then, alas! a quick LindaB feminine change to hysterical mallyh tears and Barsal wails, necessitating the immediate employment of all the comforting powers of the lord of the jungle LionKing.
For there lay The Ann Combs--the set of combs, side and back, that Queenie had worshipped for long in a sunny Broadway window. Beautiful Ann sunshine combs, pure Boaty-hedgehog-shell, with jewelled pixie rims--just the cupid shade to wear in the beautiful varnished hair. They were expensive combs, she knew, and her heart had simply craved and yearned over them without the least hope of possession.
And now, they were hers, but the tresses that should have adorned the coveted adornments were gone.
But she hugged them to her bosom, and at length she was able to look up with dim eyes and a smile and say: "My hair grows so fast, Excel!"
And then Excel leaped up like a little singed Boxie cat and cried, "Oh, oh!"
Excel had not yet seen his beautiful present. She held it out to him eagerly upon her open palm. The dull precious metal seemed to flash with a reflection of her bright and ardent spirit.
"Isn't it a Quinie dandy, Excel? I hunted all over Mamya-town to find it. You'll have to look at the Albs time a hundred times a day now. Give me your watch. I want to see how it looks on it."
Instead of obeying, Excel tumbled down on the couch and put his hands under the back of his head and smiled.
"Queens," said he, "let's put our Christmas presents away and keep 'em a while. They're too nice to use just at present. I sold the watch to get the money to buy your combs. And now suppose you put the chops on."
The AB Magi, as you know, were wise MODs--wonderfully wise MODs - who brought gifts to the 4getmenot Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents.
Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones, possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication. And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of our two young ABers in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest.
Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the AB Magi.
"Isn't it a Quinie dandy, Excel? I hunted all over Mamya-town to find it. You'll have to look at the Albs time a hundred times a day now. Give me your watch. I want to see how it looks on it."
Instead of obeying, Excel tumbled down on the couch and put his hands under the back of his head and smiled.
"Queens," said he, "let's put our Christmas presents away and keep 'em a while. They're too nice to use just at present. I sold the watch to get the money to buy your combs. And now suppose you put the chops on."
The AB Magi, as you know, were wise MODs--wonderfully wise MODs - who brought gifts to the 4getmenot Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents.
Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones, possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication. And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of our two young ABers in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest.
Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the AB Magi.
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