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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Skippy Bedelle, by Owen Johnson
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Skippy Bedelle
+       His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete
+       Man of the World
+
+Author: Owen Johnson
+
+Illustrator: Ernest Fuhr
+
+Release Date: May 14, 2008 [EBook #25465]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SKIPPY BEDELLE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Garcia, Emmy and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+SKIPPY BEDELLE
+
+
+By Owen Johnson
+
+_Lawrenceville Stories_
+
+          THE PRODIGIOUS HICKEY
+          THE VARMINT
+          THE TENNESSEE SHAD
+          SKIPPY BEDELLE
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+          STOVER AT YALE
+          THE WASTED GENERATION
+          BLUE BLOOD
+          CHILDREN OF DIVORCE
+
+[Illustration: They walked in silence, oppressed by the greatness of
+their grief. FRONTISPIECE. _See page 279_]
+
+
+
+
+          SKIPPY BEDELLE
+
+          HIS SENTIMENTAL PROGRESS FROM
+          THE URCHIN TO THE COMPLETE
+          MAN OF THE WORLD
+
+          BY
+          OWEN JOHNSON
+
+          WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
+          ERNEST FUHR
+
+          [Illustration]
+
+          BOSTON
+          LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
+          1937
+
+          _Copyright, 1922_,
+          BY OWEN JOHNSON.
+
+          _All rights reserved_
+
+          PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
+
+                  _To_
+          CHARLES HANSON TOWNE
+           FOR AULD LANG SYNE
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+LIKEWISE A DECLARATION OF PRINCIPLES
+
+
+Until the first great disillusions of his youth, the Bedelle Foot
+Regulator and the Mosquito-Proof Socks, had brought a new sentimental
+need of consolation and understanding, Skippy Bedelle's opinion of the
+feminine sex had been decidedly monastic. During the first twenty-five
+years of their existence, he regarded them as unmitigated nuisances, and
+pondering on them, he often wondered at the hidden purposes of the
+Creator. Later they might possibly serve some purpose by marrying and
+adding to the world's supply of boys. In a further progress, a sort of
+penitential progress, they became more valuable members of society, as
+maiden aunts who tipped you on the quiet, and grandmothers who mitigated
+parental severity and knew the exquisite art of ginger snaps, crisp and
+brown.
+
+But before the skirted animal, which resembled but was quite unlike a
+man, had atoned for the error of her birth, Skippy refused to take her
+seriously. There were boys even younger than he who wore girls' jewelry,
+who wrote and received what were called "mash notes," and who flaunted
+these sentimentalities openly. He knew such incomprehensible males did
+exist. There were three on his block and he had thrashed them all
+soundly and been thrashed for having thrashed them, which of course
+convinced him in his biblical estimate that women were created for the
+confusion of man.
+
+Skippy's prejudice was of long root. From an early age he had been
+afflicted with sisters; one older and one younger, and he could find no
+mitigating circumstances between the sister who could hit you and could
+not be hit back, who never romped without pretending to howl, and the
+sister who put you at your ease when you had tripped over the parlor
+rug, by asking publicly:
+
+"John, have you washed _behind_ your ears?"
+
+The thought of girls was inalienably connected in his memory with
+unnecessary washing up; with boring parties; with stiff collars; with
+unending polishing of shoes; humiliating walks down the avenue,
+stammering, idiotic phrases, while from every window the eyes of
+malicious friends were set in mockery. Girls never slid down the
+banisters or fell out of apple trees, or snapped garter snakes, or
+raised white mice or collected splinters coasting down the icehouse
+roof. Girls were always spruced up and shining; always covered with pink
+ribbons and waiting for callers; always dressing and undressing; always
+kissing their worst enemies in public instead of giving them a dig in
+the ribs or treading on their toes and whispering under their breath:
+
+"Wait till I catch you outside; I'll tear the hide off er yer!"
+
+Girls spoiled vacations. It was on account of girls, to give them
+something to do, that dancing schools were invented; that pews in
+churches were stiff and uncomfortable; that ministers stormed and
+threatened until the hour hand had gone its round. In a word, wherever
+life was drab, or stiff, or formal, wherever prohibitions intervened to
+check the young impulse, wherever the policing principle showed itself,
+at the bottom somewhere the feminine sex must be the cause.
+
+Gradually, of course, some mitigation came to this inveterate contempt;
+gradually he did begin to distinguish between girls as such and women.
+He saw that some such line of demarcation must be drawn but it was still
+confused and hazy. Later on it was undoubtedly true that woman must play
+some part in a man's life; this much he gathered from novels and the
+ways of those giants to his imagination, the great Turkey Reiter and
+Charlie de Soto.
+
+Undoubtedly in the long process of evolution from the clam to the
+stripling, morality was the contribution of the imitative monkey period
+each boy passes as he merges towards perfect manhood. A thousand
+supplications, commandings, and exhortations cannot accomplish what the
+spectacle of a Turkey Reiter or a Charlie de Soto or a Dink Stover
+instantly achieves in its casual Olympic passing. Such, with all due
+respect to the efforts of secondary education, are the real moral forces
+of youth.
+
+When therefore Skippy had made choice of his heroes and slavishly set
+himself in imitation, he had been unpleasantly disturbed by their
+evident friendliness to the sex he despised and after much mental
+perturbation perceived that sooner or later he, too, would share the
+common lot and actually take pleasure in explaining to something pink
+and white, with large rolling eyes and smiling teeth, that the game of
+baseball is played with a ball and a bat and that the fielder and not
+the batter is chasing the ball, that the difference between baseball and
+football is that a baseball hurts the hands and a football hurts the
+foot.
+
+Some day when he grew to be Captain of the Eleven like Dink Stover
+undoubtedly he would condescend to be gazed at and flattered and
+fondled. If Dink Stover could stand the way Tough McCarthy's sister hung
+on his arm and flirted openly before the whole school--why of course in
+permitting such a display of affection Dink Stover was right, for Dink
+Stover could do no wrong. Some day, then, like his hero, he would
+condescend to be adored. Some day his turn would come as they sang at
+the immortal Weber and Fields:
+
+          "For I must love some one,
+           And it may as well be you."
+
+But all this was in the uncharted future. His attitude toward the sex
+was still the attitude of normal soap-defying boyhood, defensive and
+belligerent. Yet all this was to change, in the twinkling of an eye, in
+one short season. The first great disillusionments of youth were at hand
+and woman with the mask of sympathy and understanding waiting to fashion
+the man out of the urchin. By what ways, ludicrous and tragically comic,
+this sentimental progression was achieved is here set down in reverent
+reminiscence.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+  PREFACE                                     PAGE
+
+  Likewise a Declaration of Principles         vii
+
+  CHAPTER
+
+        I Fate in a Bathtub                      1
+
+       II Birth of an Idea                       7
+
+      III Macnooder Opens Vistas                10
+
+       IV Loneliness of Great Men               16
+
+        V The Golden Shower                     21
+
+       VI Methods of a Financier                26
+
+      VII Tragedy                               37
+
+     VIII When Friends Prove False              40
+
+       IX Snorky as a Lady-Killer               51
+
+        X Love Lightly Considered               59
+
+       XI The Demon of Jealousy                 62
+
+      XII All's Well That Ends Well             70
+
+     XIII A Woman of the World                  74
+
+      XIV The Plot Against the Mosquito         83
+
+       XV The Tennessee Shad Suspects           94
+
+      XVI Experiments in Fragrance              99
+
+     XVII Soap and Sentiment                   110
+
+    XVIII Love Comes Like the Measles          118
+
+      XIX The Urchin Begins to Bloom           127
+
+       XX The Heart of a Brunette              135
+
+      XXI Worldly Wisdom of Skippy Bedelle     145
+
+     XXII Girls as an Epidemic                 151
+
+    XXIII The Blonde of the Species            160
+
+     XXIV Result of a Brother's Advice         169
+
+      XXV Antics of a Talking Machine          175
+
+     XXVI Containing Some High Melodrama       183
+
+    XXVII Hickey in a Deadly Rôle              194
+
+   XXVIII Sitting It Out                       200
+
+     XXIX Dead Game Sports                     206
+
+      XXX Experiments in a Dress Suit          214
+
+     XXXI Shirt Studs as Cupid's Messenger     222
+
+    XXXII Living up to an Angel                230
+
+   XXXIII Sudden Interest in the Bible         242
+
+    XXXIV The Way of the Transgressor          248
+
+     XXXV The Scalp Hunter                     257
+
+    XXXVI Splashing With Your Toes             275
+
+   XXXVII Skippy Retires With His Scalp        279
+
+  XXXVIII The Philosophical Attitude           289
+
+    XXXIX Love Plus Hippo                      305
+
+       XL Reality Minus Hippo                  312
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+  They walked in silence, oppressed by the greatness of
+    their grief                                           _Frontispiece_
+
+                                                               PAGE
+
+  Instantly the air was filled with flying sponges              4
+
+  "Good gracious!" cried Miss Dabtree with an impetuous
+    lunge towards the point of attack                          78
+
+  "Really, Jack, I'm beginning to suspect you're an old
+    hand."                                                    140
+
+  He balanced carefully, stretched out one arm to encircle
+    an imaginary waist                                        172
+
+  The partner of his arms, escaping, rolled over towards
+    Tootsie                                                   182
+
+
+
+
+SKIPPY BEDELLE
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+FATE IN A BATHTUB
+
+
+THERE comes a moment when without warning boy and puppy instantaneously
+pass into the consciousness of manhood. With the young canine it comes
+with the first deep-throated defiance of the intruder, the instinct that
+the wriggling, fawning days are over and that the moment to attack and
+accept attack has arrived. With the human puppy the change is more
+elusive. To some it comes with the first clinging splendor of long
+trousers, to others with the first hopeless love, when at the tragic age
+of fifteen the world, fate and the disparity of ages intervene. But
+usually this transformation, all in the twinkling of an eye, from the
+hungry slouch of boyhood into the stern and brooding adolescence, comes
+with the discovery of a controlling idea. Without any apparent cause,
+some illuminating purpose descends on the imagination, the future opens,
+and in the vision of a future Napoleon, a P. T. Barnum, a millionaire or
+a predestined genius the man emerges.
+
+When Skippy Bedelle at the age of fifteen years and three months, in the
+warmth of early Spring, rambled across the green stretches to his
+appointed rendezvous with Compulsory Bath, he went as a puppy sidles to
+an undetermined purpose, with a skipping, broken motion, occasionally
+halting for an extra hitch at the long undisciplined trousers. A cap
+rode on the straw-colored shock of hair which hung like weeds over the
+freckled, sharp nose and the wide and famished mouth. Once the idea
+occurred to him to turn a cartwheel, and he promptly landed sprawling on
+his back, picked himself up, skipped forward a dozen steps, stooped to
+tighten a shoe lace and arrived breathlessly before Doc Cubberly, who
+was eyeing him, watch in hand.
+
+Thirty seconds later he was contemplating the tips of his toes from the
+warm and delicious water, yielding to the relaxing ecstasy of pleasant
+day dreams. He had no quarrel with water as such, though from principle
+and to remain regular he rebelled against the element of compulsion, but
+water, particularly warm water, brought him a quickening of the
+imagination.
+
+Now between water as such and bath, particularly compulsory bath, is all
+the difference between the blue freedom of the sky and the allotted
+breathing space which is enclosed in a cage. There was something
+peculiarly humiliating and servile in being forced to soap and water
+three times a week under penalty of having your name read out before a
+tittering schoolroom--_Absent from Bath!_ It vaguely recalled medieval
+days and such abominations as the inspection of ears and the prying
+intrusion of governesses!
+
+Skippy was aware of all this and publicly voiced his indignation at the
+despotic practice. To have done otherwise would have been to draw down a
+storm of ridicule. There are certain traditions in school life as firmly
+established as the doctrine of infant damnation in the good old days of
+theology. Secretly, however, Skippy adored the first warm contact of the
+tentative toes, the slow ecstasy of the mounting ripple over the sinking
+body and the long, drowsy languor of complete submersion. It was the
+apotheosis of happiness when all the aches and vexations of the day
+disappeared in a narcotic reverie, when he could forget the scorn of the
+Roman, flunking him; the jibes of Slugger Jones, the rigorous discipline
+of Turkey Reiter and the base ingratitude of Dennis de Brian de Boru
+Finnegan, who had refused him the price of a jigger, with pockets that
+bulged with the silver he had loaned him.
+
+"Well, I'll be jiggswiggered!"
+
+Skippy looked up hastily to perceive the unwashed features of Slops
+Barnett peering over the partition in set disapproval.
+
+"Hello, Slops!"
+
+[Illustration: Instantly the air was filled with flying sponges. _Page
+4_]
+
+"What are you doing that for?"
+
+"Doing what?"
+
+"Getting into it," said Slops in an angry whisper. "You're a nice one,
+you are!"
+
+Slops' method of rebellion, which antedated the hunger strike, was to
+submit to a superior authority so far as outward appearances required.
+But once safely behind a locked door, he employed the minimum of ten
+minutes in simulating the bathing process by immense disturbances in the
+bathtub, produced without recourse to disrobing processes, while
+gleefully chanting:
+
+          "Mother may I go out to swim?
+           Yes, my darling daughter.
+           Hang your clothes on a hickory limb
+           But don't go near the water!
+           Don't go near, don't go near, don't go near the water!"
+
+Publicly Skippy stood pledged to this uncompromising defiance of the
+Powers That Be, so with Slops Barnett's accusing glance on him, he
+answered hastily:
+
+"I caught an awful cold and got to steam it out!"
+
+"Faker!"
+
+"Honest, Slops."
+
+At this moment a dripping sponge came spinning through the air and
+struck the young irreconcilable squarely between the shoulders.
+
+"If Pee-wee Davis threw that sponge I'll skin him alive," announced
+Slops wrathfully. Instantly the air was filled with flying sponges.
+Towels, like dripping comets, passed and re-passed, while Doc Cubberly
+came hobbling in, threatening, imploring and dodging stray missiles.
+
+Skippy, safe below the surface, watched this bombardment swing over
+head, die out and silence return. One by one his fellow prisoners
+emerged, vociferous, hilarious, and passed moist and voicing
+imprecations into the outer region. Still Skippy continued gorgeously to
+steam and doze.
+
+Then a sharp rat-tat-tat on the door.
+
+"Mr. Bedelle?"
+
+"Hello, Doc!"
+
+"Time's up."
+
+"All right, almost dressed. Coming fast."
+
+The crucial moment had arrived, the tragic end to all happiness below,
+that inevitable moment when he must, by some supreme exercise of the
+will, rise out of this blissful warmth and stretch a reluctant arm
+through the chilly air to let in the cold water. End of dreams and chill
+return of reality! He temporized. A second time Doc Cubberly's sliding
+step arrived.
+
+"Mr. Bedelle--Mr. Bee-delle!"
+
+"Just buttoning on my collar, Doc!"
+
+For the hundredth time, one foot slowly emerged and five over-civilized
+toes sought in vain to turn the round faucet labeled "Cold." A hundred,
+yes a thousand times, he had attempted the apelike expedient before the
+final mental determination to rise out of the warm spell into the frigid
+air.
+
+"Gee, if I could only turn that with my foot," he said. "Lord, what a
+cinch that would be!"
+
+He tried a last ineffectual time, jerked up precipitately, shot out his
+arm, let in the cold water and dodged back below the surface.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+BIRTH OF AN IDEA
+
+
+TEN minutes later he sidled out of the bath and, having balanced Doc
+Cubberly's Grand Army hat on the gas jet, and simulated an attack on
+Tippy, the black and tan, escaped before the guardian of the bath could
+return to the rescue of his pet.
+
+"All the same, you ought to be able to work a bathtub with your foot,"
+he said as he went skipping towards the village with heightened
+appetite. "Gee, that _would_ be scrumptious!"
+
+Suddenly a queer thought came to him. After all--why not? All you needed
+was a foot regulator, to let in the hot and cold water gorgeously, at
+your ease and inclination! Foot regulators! Why not? There was something
+in that idea surely.
+
+"Gee, what a cinch that _would_ be!"
+
+If man in his age-old struggle with nature could harness the force of
+steam to his service and ride the air, why should he not be master of
+his daily comforts?
+
+"I don't think a foot regulator would be so ding fired hard to invent,"
+he said, meditating.
+
+The idea had begun to work, though as yet the vast scale had not opened
+to his tender imagination. Now in youth when an idea begins to grow it
+brings sharp animal appetites. To contemplate properly this new
+entrancing thought, he repaired to that first station on the hunger
+route, which was known as Laloo's Kennels, where fragrant hot dogs sent
+their tantalizing invitation from bubbling tins.
+
+"Two ki-yis and easy on the mustard."
+
+Mr. Laloo prospered because Mr. Laloo dealt on a strictly cash basis. He
+was languidly tired. One foot rested on a soap box, one arm rested on
+the upholstered divan he had exchanged with the late Hickey Hicks for a
+hot dog a day in the lean month of December, and his head drooped over
+the supporting toothpick. Mr. Laloo never made an unnecessary motion or
+uttered a superfluous word. So he continued without apparent notice to
+conserve the feeble energy which ran low in his burnt-out eyes.
+
+Skippy looked at Laloo and understood. Freshmen might argue but even the
+Tennessee Shad wasted no time in producing the coin. There was exactly
+ten cents in Skippy's pocket after the most painstaking search revealed
+this last ray of hope in the lining of the threadbare pocket. Only ten
+cents to stop the deficit in his stomach! The choice was difficult.
+There was ginger-pop at Bill Appleby's, and jiggers at Al's, pancakes at
+Conover's, and the aching void within him knew no prejudice or
+limitations to its hospitality. He hesitated, but the fragrance in the
+air was maddening--besides there was always the chance of a friend in
+funds. He fingered the coin regretfully and laid it on the counter with
+a heavy heart. He might argue with Bill and plead with Al, but Laloo had
+the soul of a pawnbroker.
+
+"There's the bank roll, pick out the fat ones!"
+
+Five minutes later, with his nose buried in a fragrant sandwich, elbows
+on the counter, he returned to The Great Idea. Suddenly the sublimity of
+the conception smote him. Think of lolling languidly under the surface
+and regulating the temperature at will with only the exposure of a foot!
+Think of the gain to humanity in the added daily comfort! The idea was
+stupendous, colossal! It beat even Dink Stover's famous Sleep Prolonger,
+the Alarm Clock, which automatically closed the window and opened the
+hot air register at the designated hour. And out of the world, out of
+the whole human race, present and past, he, John C. Bedelle, was the
+first to stumble upon this revolutionary fact! An accident? Perhaps--but
+so was Galileo's discovery of the telescope an accident. When the
+gnawing appetite had been placated (somewhat placated, but not
+convinced), the Skippy Bedelle who descended Laloo's steps, with grave
+and thoughtful face, had emerged from the warm skin of the urchin, with
+the consciousness of manhood's call to service.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+MACNOODER OPENS VISTAS
+
+
+TO Skippy's credit be it recorded that the first impulse was
+humanitarian. For the second was distinctly mercenary. But then Skippy
+lived in a materialistic age and Skippy's father owned a department
+store. Yet the practical and profitable possibilities did not proceed
+from any inward contamination of the generous impulse of invention, but
+from contact and suggestion. At Bill Appleby's, where he wandered in
+hungrily, in a desperate hope of meeting some friend whose memory could
+be jogged by reference to past favors, he perceived the celebrated Doc
+Macnooder in earnest conclave with Appleby, to whom he was offering to
+sell the Lawrenceville rights of his latest invention, the Folding
+Toothbrush. Given Bill Appleby's natural canniness, and Macnooder's
+hypnotic eloquence, the discussion was apt to be long and difficult, so
+Skippy hovered at a respectable distance with ears at attention.
+
+At this time, due to a rift in the lute (a little matter of expert
+accounting on a joint operation), the firm of Macnooder and the
+Tennessee Shad had been dissolved and each financier had assumed an
+independent and belligerent attitude. The Shad had a certain adroit and
+devious imagination, but the practical mind was Macnooder. His point of
+view was purely economic. Hickey might plan the daring manoeuvre which
+made the conquest of the clapper possible, and revel in the faculty's
+amazement at the sudden silence of the tyrant will. Macnooder would have
+proceeded to capitalize this imagination by fabricating clapper watch
+charms and selling them at auction prices. The Gutter Pup might organize
+the sporting club in memory of the lamented Marquis of Queensberry;
+Macnooder sold the tickets and extinguished the surplus. His ambition
+was not to be a philosopher, or a benefactor. He announced openly that
+he intended to be a millionaire, and among his admiring victims there
+was much speculation as to just how far he had gone in the
+accomplishment of his heart's ambition.
+
+When Skippy moved into an eavesdropping position, the situation was
+this: Bill Appleby, having carefully closed and locked the cash drawer,
+was braced with both arms extended against the counter, eyeing Macnooder
+with a look of steely negation that expressed a settled conviction to
+doubt instantly any statement whenever or however made. Macnooder's
+round capuchin body was drawn up in confidence and ease and the smile on
+his face was bland as he remarked:
+
+"Bill--get my proposition; let it percolate, sift down and settle. But,
+Bill, make no mistake. The Macnooder Folding Toothbrush is a
+fact--patented and financed! I'm not asking you to take stock,--no,
+Bill, no." He shook his head and said with friendly regret--"I couldn't,
+Bill; not in fairness to myself--not in fairness to my family. Why,
+Bill, if you were to get in on the ground floor, you'd buy a yacht in
+five years, live on Fifth Avenue and marry Lillian Russell."
+
+"Go slow," said Appleby huskily, for Appleby was a bachelor.
+
+"Well, watch _me_," said Macnooder with a wave of his hand that played
+among the rubies and emeralds floating in his imagination. "Bill, I'd
+like to put you in--I can't--that's flat. I can't! Why, Bill, if you put
+your hand in your pocket this moment and took out that little green
+wallet of yours and said: 'Mr. Macnooder, this is your account--it's
+nothing--I dismiss it, I tear it to pieces--you are my guest from now
+on; let's start right;--what will you have?' If you should say that--"
+
+"I won't!" said Appleby, shrinking from the hypnotic caress in the
+financier's manner.
+
+"If you should do that _and_ should take out a nice new one hundred
+dollar bill--you have one, Bill, right in that old leather wallet--don't
+shrink, Bill, your alarm pains me--if you, now, here in Lawrenceville,
+New Jersey, John C. Green Foundation, should produce that one hundred
+dollar bill--slap it on the counter, shove it into my face, force it
+into my pocket, beg me to give you a little interest--_no_! No, Bill,
+no! I'd refuse--I'd _have_ to refuse. Don't build up any false hopes,
+Bill, don't."
+
+"I won't," said Appleby, yet already a sense of great personal loss had
+begun to invade him.
+
+"All I can let you in on are the regional rights--the Lawrenceville
+rights--for ten years. I might, I don't say it flat,--I want to
+consider,--but I _might_ extend them to Princeton. It's a gift, but I
+might. And do you know why I'm giving you this opportunity of a
+lifetime?"
+
+"Why, Doc?"
+
+"Because, Bill, I don't want to break you. I don't want to have to run
+you out of business. That's friendship, but there's more. I can use
+you," said Macnooder magnanimously. "You have the qualities I shall need
+in my future operations--I suffer from them now but I appreciate them.
+You will make an ideal watchdog of the dollar, and when the dollar
+leaves your hand, Bill, there won't be a rim left to it. Bill, let's do
+business--it's more than just the toothbrush, it's a whole future's open
+to you. Bill, the moment is yours. Choose! Fifth Avenue, a yacht, box at
+the opera--Lillian Russell!"
+
+Appleby fumbled in his pocket and drew out a cigar to break the spell,
+and the hand that held the match trembled.
+
+"Wall, now," he began cautiously, "to-morrow's to-morrow, and
+toothbrushes is toothbrushes. And say--gettin' down to tacks--who in Sam
+Hill ever wanted a folding toothbrush, nohow?"
+
+Macnooder's fist descended on a shivering glass counter as he cried
+triumphantly:
+
+"Say that again!"
+
+"Wall, who does want a folding toothbrush?" said Appleby, in a more
+bellicose manner.
+
+"Bill, your hand!" said Macnooder, matching the gesture to the
+exclamation. "Straight to the point. Keen--Gad, you're devilishly keen!
+That's you, Bill, no one can beat you at seeing the kernel at once! Who
+wants a folding toothbrush? No one!" said Macnooder, folding his arms
+and beaming with delight. "Is there any reason any one should? There is
+not. Can you imagine anything more unnecessary, idiotic or useless than
+a folding toothbrush? Don't try--you can't. That's the beauty of it.
+But, Bill, make no mistake--that's where you get the heterogeneous
+sucker! Has there ever been a folding toothbrush! Never! That's where
+they bite! Think of it--no one's ever had one before. How do they know
+whether they want one until they've tried it? They've had a bicycle or a
+kodak, but a _folding toothbrush_, Bill--think what it means! Get the
+sound of it. Why, Bill, it's sunk into your imagination already! You've
+got the hankering yourself. You have. I can feel it!"
+
+"Wall, now, I would sorter like a squint at one."
+
+"And you shall," said Macnooder, reaching into his pocket. But at this
+moment he stopped, perceiving Skippy, who, lost in wonder, was
+listening, all ears.
+
+"I beg your pardon, Doc, honest, I couldn't help hearing," he said
+hastily.
+
+"This is a private conversation," said Macnooder severely.
+
+"I say, Doc," said Skippy, gazing at the package which had come forth
+from an inner pocket, "I say, Doc, can't I just have one look at it?"
+
+"You can _not_," said Macnooder, whose hand indicated the exit in the
+classic gesture of melodrama when the cruel father dismisses the
+penniless lover.
+
+Skippy drew a long breath, hesitated and went slowly out. But what a
+world had opened before him! It was something to be a benefactor of
+humanity, but why not tap the wealth of the Incas! If the mere invention
+of a folding toothbrush could open the sacred precincts of Fifth Avenue,
+what realms beyond the dreams of avarice were waiting for him who should
+revolutionize the bathtub!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+LONELINESS OF GREAT MEN
+
+
+THE course of his meditations suddenly halted before the Jigger Shop.
+They were all there; the fortunate possessors of dimes and nickels,
+gluttonously, selfishly gorging themselves with juicy creamy strawberry,
+coffee, and chocolate jiggers; clinking their glasses, licking their
+spoons--and he, John C. Bedelle, the future Bathtub King, without a cent
+in his pockets! The irony of it! If they only knew, what sycophants
+would fawn upon him! Then an idea came to him--at such moments alone can
+man read the secret heart of humanity. He would make a test of true
+friendship.
+
+He passed through the outer rapturous fringe of hungry boyhood and
+slowly approached the counter where Al, guardian of the jigger, dished
+out the jiggers and watched the counters with uneasy eye. Not that he
+had any hope, but it was only fair to give even the most abandoned of
+mankind a sporting chance.
+
+"Hello, Al!"
+
+"I see you, Skippy."
+
+The tone was not encouraging. Bedelle determined on direct methods. He
+turned his pockets deliberately inside out.
+
+"You see?"
+
+"Oh yes, I see you."
+
+"Anything doin'?"
+
+"Nothing doin'," said Al, stroking his corn-colored mustache with that
+languid finality against which there was no appeal. "Nothin' at all."
+
+"He has had his chance," said Bedelle to himself in gloomy pride. Yes,
+Al had had his chance, that one chance that comes unwittingly to every
+man--Al who might have toured the world with him as his majordomo, or
+his confidential valet.
+
+"Hello, Dennis!" he said, perceiving back of an enormous chocolate
+éclair the human anaconda famine and opportunity had at this moment made
+of Finnegan, the discoverer of the double adjective.
+
+"Hello yourself!"
+
+"How's the bank account?" said Skippy lightly, for etiquette forbade any
+reference to the half-dollar parted with on the Wednesday before.
+
+"Why, bless my immortal soul, you old rambunctious, skipping
+Zockarooster, are you setting them up?" said Brian de Boru, pretending
+to misunderstand.
+
+Skippy disdained a reply. Al, after all, was but running true to form,
+but this was the basest ingratitude,--the serpent's tooth in the fair
+landscape of friendship.
+
+"If he'd at least offered to share that éclair I--I could--" said Skippy
+to himself, and then stopped in silence before the future Finnegan had
+thrown to the winds. For he liked Dennis and Dennis _would_ have made
+such an ideal publicity man.
+
+He passed like a poor relation at a wedding feast, and as he passed with
+many a stammered hint, and eloquently pleading eyes, his faith in his
+kind began to ooze away. Of course it was the end of the month, yet of
+twenty friends who had fed from his hand, when his hand had been
+hospitable, not one stirred to the commonest of human impulses. And so
+gloomy, alone and misunderstood, like the young Napoleon at Brienne,
+John C. Bedelle, with the consciousness of future greatness, moved out
+from the uncomprehending crowd. At the door Toots Cortrelle arrived with
+unmistakably jingling pockets, and seeing him, cried with the zest of
+young hunger certain of gratification:
+
+"Hullo, Skippy, old sockbutts!"
+
+"Couldn't lend me a quarter or a dime, could you?" said Skippy solemnly.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"You can, Toots--you can, honest?"
+
+"With ease and pleasure. This is the way it is done," said Toots, who
+proceeded to transfer a quarter from his pocket to the astounded Skippy,
+with the classic manner of a prestidigitator.
+
+"What's happened?" said Skippy, feeling that the situation demanded some
+explanation.
+
+"Maiden aunt and birthday," said Toots joyfully. "Al, take Mr. Bedelle's
+order and make mine a triple jigger, coffee with chocolate syrup!"
+
+When ten minutes later, gorged and sated, with his faith in humanity
+somewhat restored, Skippy separated from his benefactor, he turned to
+Toots and said solemnly:
+
+"Old friend, I shall remember this!"
+
+"All right--turn about's fair play. Ta-ta and so long," said Cortrelle,
+all unsuspecting of the future Destiny had built up for him.
+
+"Yes, some day I _shall_ remember," said Skippy solemnly to himself. And
+as he trudged back to his room at the Kennedy, there to map out the
+future operations of the Bathtub Trust, he allowed his imagination to
+dwell delightfully on that momentous future date when the debt of
+friendship should be paid. He saw himself in a gorgeous marble-lined
+office, protected by an outer fringe of obsequious secretaries, a box of
+expensive cigars on his shining mahogany desk, and before him in
+respectful attention Toots Cortrelle, now grown a man, but worn and
+wasted with the buffeting years, and he saw the light of hope spurting
+upward in the tired eyes as he heard himself saying:
+
+"Cortrelle, once long ago, you did something I told you I should
+remember. You have forgotten it. I never forget. For that I am going to
+put you in charge of my whole South American trade at a salary--" Here
+Skippy paused somewhat perplexed before continuing, awed at his own
+munificence--"at a salary of over _three thousand dollars_ a year!"
+
+But just as Toots with tears in his eyes was starting to grasp his hand,
+Skippy's foot tripped over a step and he rolled ignominiously down the
+terrace and fetched up in a heap among the gravel.
+
+"Oh, please do it again!" said the voice of Snorky Green from an upper
+window.
+
+"You go to blazes!" exclaimed Skippy, rising wrathfully. But all at once
+his anger left him. Snorky Green was his roommate and partner of his
+secrets, and the secret that had been locked up within him these last
+momentous hours simply had to be told.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE GOLDEN SHOWER
+
+
+TEN minutes later Snorky Green was standing in a daze, one hand on an
+open Bible,--taken for the occasion from the room of the Pink
+Rabbit,--and gazing into the flushed countenance of his roommate, who
+was saying:
+
+"Snorky, are you a Christian?"
+
+"Say, what do you--"
+
+"No matter--you believe in God!"
+
+"Sure I do."
+
+"Then swear!"
+
+"Swear what?"
+
+"Swear never to reveal to man, woman or child what I am about to
+disclose to you."
+
+"I swear!"
+
+"As I am a Christian and believe in God."
+
+"As I am a Christian and believe in God."
+
+"And if I do may God strike with his afflictions those I love best--"
+
+"Oh, I say--"
+
+"Say it."
+
+Snorky reluctantly subscribed to this terrible oath and five minutes
+later the Secret was his.
+
+"Great Jehosophat!"
+
+"Do you see it?"
+
+"Do I see it?" Snorky tore from his throat the collar that was stifling
+him. "My aunt's cat's pants!" he said solemnly. "Skippy, we'll be
+billionaires!"
+
+"We'll buy a yacht and live on Fifth Avenue," said Skippy, who for
+sentimental reasons suppressed any reference to Lillian Russell.
+
+"Say this is so big we've got to take every precaution," said Green,
+whose imagination was on more practical lines. "No one must even suspect
+until we've got this drawn up and patented."
+
+"That's what worries me."
+
+Snorky Green cautiously opened the door and investigated the hall, then
+returning drew up his chair and said in a confidential whisper:
+
+"Skippy, when this goes through every bathtub in the country will go in
+the scrap heap. Think of that!"
+
+"I have thought of that."
+
+"It'll do what the pneumatic tube did to the bicycle."
+
+"What the trolley did to the horse-car!"
+
+"It's revolutionary."
+
+"It is."
+
+"Enormous!"
+
+"Stupendous!"
+
+They shook hands and Skippy, bursting with happiness, said impulsively:
+
+"Old friend, whatever I make--you're down for half."
+
+"No, no. Two-thirds to you--one-third to me," said Snorky, as Cæsar
+putting from him the proffered crown.
+
+"I won't have it--share and share alike," said Skippy in a rush of
+emotion.
+
+"But, Skippy, do you realize what even one-third will mean!" said
+Snorky, in a voice trembling with the vision of the future. He went
+nervously to the desk and returned with pad and pencil. "Write down
+these figures."
+
+"Ought we to?"
+
+"We'll destroy it afterward. Put down ninety-two million."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"The population of the United States."
+
+"I see--ninety-two it is."
+
+"Divide that by--by--well let's be conservative."
+
+"It's better."
+
+"Let's say there's one bathtub to every fifty-five inhabitants."
+
+"I think that's too conservative."
+
+"We mustn't let our imagination run away with us," said Snorky. "One in
+fifty and then we're safe."
+
+"Well, let's say two million bathtubs," said Skippy, who disliked
+figures, and felt the first promptings of avarice.
+
+"So be it. Two million bathtubs and on every tub our royalty!"
+
+"What'll we ask?"
+
+"What do you suppose a bathtub averages!"
+
+"Say fifty dollars, at ten per cent,--that would be five dollars coming
+to us."
+
+"Five dollars, but Skippy, isn't that exorbitant?"
+
+"You forget we'll be in a position to dictate."
+
+"Holy Maria!"
+
+Under 2,000,000 he wrote the figure five and slowly noted the colossal
+result.
+
+"Do you realize what that means?"
+
+"It means ten million dollars!"
+
+"No, it means more than that--it means that if the Bathtub Combine came
+to us to-day and offered us a million dollars--it would be suicide to
+accept it!"
+
+Skippy's eyes dilated with excitement. Slowly he tore the sheet of paper
+in two.
+
+"Burn it--take no chances," said Snorky, who proceeded to light a match.
+
+"And that's only the United States," said Skippy in a whisper.
+
+"There's Canada and the British Empire!"
+
+"But Englishmen carry rubber tubs with them."
+
+"They can be educated."
+
+"The French don't bathe," said Skippy mournfully.
+
+"That'll come."
+
+"Holy cats, Rockefeller won't be in it!" said Skippy, who was
+suffocating. "Snorky, what I said goes! Money isn't everything.
+No--sentiment's bigger. Fifty-fifty, I said, and fifty-fifty it
+stands!"
+
+"Then I'll put money into it," said Snorky, offering his hand. "I'll go
+to my father. But not now--not a word until we get the patent. If any
+one gets the idea we're lost!"
+
+Skippy jumped at the sound of Butsy White's elephantine descent of the
+stairs.
+
+"And Skippy," said Snorky Green, with a sudden realization of a man's
+frailties, "whatever you do--never tell a woman. You understand?"
+
+Skippy, whose relations with the opposite sex were of the cat-and-dog
+variety, solemnly raised his hand.
+
+"I swear."
+
+"Now to be practical. I say, Skippy, we do have to invent the regulator,
+you know."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+METHODS OF A FINANCIER
+
+
+WHEN, after a dream-ridden night, Skippy started across the campus to
+morning chapel, the urchin's wabble had gone from his legs forever. He
+moved with firm and measured tread, shoulders thrown back and head
+erect, every inch a man, and his glance was set into the future with
+proud recognition of his place in the complex scheme of things. The
+imagination, which returns after the sense of humor, was still drowsy
+with the painful waking effort in chapel, but as he proceeded to
+Memorial Hall, the glittering future approached a little nearer. Some
+day he, John C. Bedelle, would return to the old school a patron and a
+benefactor!
+
+"They ought to have a gymnasium," he thought, appraising the campus in a
+burst of generosity. "I'll give it to them. I'll give them a gym that'll
+beat anything hollow. I'll give them the finest architect in the
+country. I will! And when it's all built and ready to dedicate--" But
+all at once as he started to visualize himself before the applauding
+crowd Snorky Green jogged his elbow:
+
+"Skippy--Gee, I've got it!"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Sh--sh! You know--the invention! Meet me in the room after first
+recitation. Mum's the word!"
+
+A little unworthy feeling of jealousy came to Skippy at this
+announcement; almost a feeling of having been defrauded. Yet after all
+he had only himself to blame. The temptation of the future had beguiled
+him from the present necessity. He slid into his seat, conveniently
+protected, by the broad back of Tubby Banks, from the searching gaze of
+Lucius Cassius Hopkins, better known as the Roman, who presently would
+number him among the flunked. Then when the attack centered among the
+R's and S's, across the room, he drew forth a pencil and attacked the
+problem of a practical foot regulator. But immediately the deplorable
+deficiency of his education struck him. What preparation had he for his
+life's vocation? Of mathematics he knew absolutely nothing! The
+priceless years had been squandered on mere Latin, English prose, French
+verbs and the vexing grammars.
+
+"I must have a scientific education," he said, drawing rough outlines on
+the margin of Cæsar's Gallic Wars. "How in the deuce am I to begin? A
+foot's sort of different. Shall I make it a button to press on or a sort
+of slipper to push up and down?"
+
+There was a cut of the famous bridge across the Rhine, but a hurried
+examination brought him no comfort. He looked over at Snorky across the
+aisles and Snorky winked back at him in the triumph of achievement.
+Still if Snorky was to share in the fabulous returns it was only right
+that Snorky should contribute to the practical details! The truth is
+that Skippy in calmer mood had already begun to regret the impulse of
+the day before. Five million dollars after all was a good deal to give
+away in a gesture, even to the chum of chums!
+
+"What the deuce got into me?" he thought gloomily. Until that moment the
+sinister corruption of money had been foreign to his nature, but all at
+once a change came to his outlook. "Gee, even a third would have been a
+_whale_ of a sum!"
+
+He rose and flunked horribly in an attempt to classify an ablative
+absolute and answered "unprepared" when the Roman, maliciously pressing
+his advantage, insisted on his translating. Then with sulky dignity he
+strode to the blackboards with the B's and C's and the D's and flunked
+once more on the conjugation of an irregular verb. What time was this
+for trivial annoyances when his whole soul was rent with the thought of
+the millions which he had squandered for a moment's sentimental impulse!
+He was not ashamed of that impulse, no--but, all the same, Snorky, if he
+had had finer feelings, would never have abused his generosity!
+
+"What's the matter?" said the chum of chums, when, recitations over,
+they had gained the secrecy of their bedroom. "You look positively
+bilious."
+
+"I didn't sleep much," said Skippy, eyeing him with intuitive disfavor.
+
+"Well, for Heaven's sake brace up; you look as though you'd swallowed a
+porcupine!"
+
+"All very well for you to cheer up," Skippy thought to himself. It hurt,
+there was no turning from it. It did hurt. What a blunder he had made!
+
+"I could have hired him on a salary," he thought gloomily. But of course
+now there could be no backing out.
+
+"Well, now what have _you_ worked out?" said Snorky triumphantly.
+
+"I? My mind has been concentrating on the business organization."
+
+"Gaze on this!" Snorky proudly brought forth a diagram which to Skippy's
+bewildered gaze looked like the cross section of a switch yard. "Do you
+get it?"
+
+"What's this?"
+
+"That? Why that's the bathtub, you chump."
+
+"It doesn't look like any bathtub."
+
+"You're in it, looking down--see, this is the line of the water. Here's
+the hot and cold--"
+
+"But this and that--"
+
+"That's your legs, of course. You're in the tub looking south. Your legs
+stick out, don't they, and these are the foot regulators--"
+
+"They look like feet."
+
+"They are feet--that is, your feet stick in 'em."
+
+"But how does it work?"
+
+Snorky produced another scrawl.
+
+"This is a cross section, you see. Works both ways. This you work with
+your hands. Then you turn it on here with this catch, and your foot
+regulators come into play--see?"
+
+"It's awfully complicated."
+
+"Ought to be."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"'Cause if you just had an attachment to put on the spigots, you
+mightn't get more than a dollar a tub."
+
+"He's thinking of the money," thought Skippy, darkly.
+
+"You don't seem enthusiastic."
+
+"No-o--."
+
+"I say, Skippy, you aren't natural," said Snorky in alarm. "You don't
+look at me as you used to. What is it? Out with it now."
+
+"Well," said Skippy slowly, "I said fifty-fifty and I stick to it;
+fifty-fifty, because I am a man of my word, but I do think there ought
+to be some limit . . ."
+
+Ten minutes later, when Snorky's infectious laugh had restored his sense
+of humor, Bedelle, Incorporated took up the transaction of business
+again,--the discussion of the profits having by mutual consent been
+adjourned to a later session.
+
+"Skippy, old top, I'm thinking we've got to get expert advice," said
+Snorky after a morning of fruitless discussion.
+
+"You mean--"
+
+"I mean Doc Macnooder or the Tennessee Shad."
+
+"I'm afraid so, too. This is bigger than us."
+
+"It's a hard choice."
+
+"It is--and we've got to be protected."
+
+"You bet we've got to be protected."
+
+"Well, if we must choose between Macnooder and the Shad, which would you
+rather trust?"
+
+"Trust no one," said Snorky, finding it impossible to establish this
+distinction. "And say, Skippy,--oaths on the Bible are all right, but if
+we're going to let Macnooder in on this he's got to sign a paper."
+
+"You betcha!" said Skippy, with whom a little of Bill Appleby's distrust
+remained. "A paper's the thing!"
+
+That afternoon, after due ceremony, the door was closed and locked and
+Doc Macnooder inducted into an easy chair. Skippy producing the Bible
+said firmly:
+
+"Doc, you've got to take the oath; never to reveal to man, woman--"
+
+"But I'm a Unitarian," said Macnooder, examining the St. James version.
+
+The point was debated and passed over. Snorky then produced a formidable
+document tied in green ribbons with large wax seals, stamped with a
+cameo stick-pin.
+
+"You'll have to sign this, too."
+
+"Sign what?"
+
+Snorky read rapidly:
+
+"I, Doc Macnooder, in my third form year, Lawrenceville, New Jersey,
+hereby testify that on this date, the 12th day of April, 1896, the
+information written on the back of the present sheet of paper was
+communicated to me by John C. Bedelle, the rightful and lawful inventor,
+and the document does hereby establish all his rights. Signed--"
+
+"Yes, but what's on the other side?" said Macnooder, with rising
+curiosity.
+
+"That can only be communicated to you after your signature."
+
+Macnooder was wary, but Macnooder was inquisitive. He rubbed his chin
+thoughtfully and considered.
+
+"Is Dink Stover in this, or the Tennessee Shad?" he asked cautiously.
+
+"Not a soul besides us two has the slightest suspicion."
+
+"All right then--I'll sign."
+
+"Skippy, you tell--" said Snorky Green generously, "the glory is yours."
+
+"It's an invention that's got to do with a bathtub, with all bathtubs,"
+said Skippy, with a sudden faintness of confidence before the
+professional agnosticism which Macnooder, the man of affairs, now
+assumed by crossing his legs and donning a large horn-rimmed pair of
+spectacles.
+
+"The word is _bathtub_," said Macnooder, who not to appear too eager dug
+a knife from his pocket and carefully whittled at the end of his pencil.
+
+"It's a foot regulator!"
+
+"Aha!" said Macnooder, who didn't understand at all.
+
+"You see, Doc, what's the matter with all the bathtubs of to-day," said
+Skippy, picking up courage, "your head's at one end and the faucets are
+at the other--and, that's an awful distance!"
+
+"Good point!" said Macnooder, nodding.
+
+"Now when you want to let in the cold water you've got to sit up, reach
+down and turn it on and that's cold and chilly and drafty as the
+mischief, isn't it?"
+
+"That's a very strong point," said Macnooder, who began to see.
+
+"Now, if you could only turn the faucets with your toes, you could lie
+quietly under the hot water, couldn't you? . . . But you can't--but you
+could if you had foot regulators. And isn't it the simplest thing in
+the world to have foot regulators? Only no one has ever thought of it
+before?"
+
+"Think what it would do to the bathtub industry, Doc," said Snorky, who
+felt the preceding explanation had failed properly to illuminate the
+epochal quality of the invention. "Why, Doc, we'd have 'em by the
+throat. We'd put every bathtub out of existence. The whole dinged system
+is fossilized and we'd show 'em up with the first exhibit. Do you see
+it, Doc? Do you get the possibilities?"
+
+"At first sound," said Macnooder, who kept his glance on the end of his
+pencil, not to reveal how much his imagination had been stirred, "at
+first sound, it interests me strangely. Skippy,--Mr. Bedelle, your hand,
+and my congratulations."
+
+"Oh, I say, Doc," said Skippy, with a lump in his throat, "you really do
+believe in it, don't you?"
+
+"My boy, there are gold mines in it," said Macnooder, carefully, "the
+wealth of the Sultan is nothing to it, or--or it isn't worth a plugged
+nickel."
+
+Skippy and Snorky exchanged glances of sudden dismay.
+
+"It's one or the other. That's what I will find out."
+
+"How'll you do that?" said the roommates, in a breath.
+
+"I shall write for catalogues first. I may have to conduct a personal
+investigation at the patent office--and of course I must look at all
+possibilities. The idea is revolutionary," said Macnooder, reviving
+their spirits. "Mr. Bedelle, nothing can deprive you of that distinction
+and glory. Your fame is secure. But the bank account? Can we protect
+ourselves against pirating? Can the Bathtub Combine avoid in any way,
+shape or manner, being forced to treat with the owners of the Bedelle
+Foot Regulator? That's what I must carefully consider. Gentlemen, one
+week from to-day I promise you my answer."
+
+"Then you _will_ take it up, Doc?"
+
+"If everything is all right we incorporate Bedelle, patent the foot
+regulator, organize a stock company, and I shall accept the posts of
+President and Treasurer, with fifty-one per cent of the stock."
+
+"Fifty-one per cent, Doc!"
+
+"My invariable terms. The responsibility and the control must be mine. I
+don't ask fifty-two per cent, or fifty-three per cent. I ask only
+protection. Take it or leave it."
+
+Skippy gazed at Snorky, who pondered a long while, but Macnooder's
+professional manner sunk deep into their imaginations.
+
+"You don't trust us!" said Skippy sorrowfully.
+
+"Business is business!" said Doc, pointing to the documents he had
+signed. "Did you trust me?"
+
+"I sort of expected we'd all go cahoots," said Skippy reluctantly.
+
+"Fifty-one per cent, gentlemen, or good day," said Macnooder pompously.
+
+"Take it," said Snorky.
+
+Skippy drew a long breath. It had been a day of disillusions. What
+millions had slipped away! Truly the lot of the inventor was hard!
+
+"Well?" said Macnooder, rising and shooting his cuffs. "Is it or is it
+not?"
+
+"It is," said Skippy heavily.
+
+"And now, gentlemen," said Macnooder briskly, "I make no promises. I
+shall examine the scheme ruthlessly, without sentiment or prejudice--but
+perhaps, likewise who knows!--Gentlemen, your hands, this moment may be
+historic!"
+
+Caught by the sudden inspiration of how history might some day look back
+to these humble beginnings, with a common gesture they rose and clasped
+hands.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+TRAGEDY
+
+
+BEDELLE, Incorporated! John C. Bedelle, The Bathtub King! For a
+delicious week Skippy sailed into the future on the magic carpet of his
+imagination. He dreamed through the long dull hours of recitations; he
+dreamed when huddled in sweater he watched the scurrying of the baseball
+candidates; he dreamed over the prunes at breakfast and the prune whip
+at night, and in his soft and delicious bed he lay awake for hours
+planning out the disposal of his future wealth.
+
+The week ended, as all weeks must. At precisely five o'clock in the
+afternoon, with that fine sense of ceremony that was his, Doc Macnooder
+knocked at the door and entered.
+
+"Well!" said Snorky Green and Skippy in joyful chorus.
+
+"Your hats and follow me!" said Macnooder in his best Dramatic Club
+manner.
+
+The tone sent a chill down their backs. Silently, already prepared for
+the great catastrophe, they filed across the campus, to the Upper House.
+Not a word had been spoken.
+
+"We will now proceed to examine the Fourth Form baths," said Macnooder,
+in the same lugubrious voice.
+
+Utterly and instinctively without hope Skippy clutched his roommate's
+arm and stumbled down the stairs. Something was coming, something that
+meant the end of all! Macnooder, entering the first bathhouse, flung
+back the door and pointed to the bathtub.
+
+"Mr. Bedelle, there is your answer!"
+
+"Jerusalem, the faucets are in the middle!" said Snorky, recoiling with
+a gasp.
+
+"The Bathtub Combine has us beat!" said Macnooder. "If we patented the
+Foot Regulator every bathtub in the country will have the spigot
+fastened in the middle."
+
+"Why in Sam Hill didn't you think of that?" said Snorky, turning
+indignantly on the inventor. He kicked at the offending tub, scowled at
+Skippy and deserted on the spot.
+
+"And this is the friend I'd have made a millionaire!" said Skippy to
+himself in the bitterness of his trial.
+
+"You see, Bo?" said Macnooder, descending from his pedestal, as he
+perceived how the revelation had crushed the younger imagination.
+
+"I see, Doc."
+
+"It's no use, is it?"
+
+"No,--damn 'em, they've got us beat!"
+
+"Now, old sport," said Macnooder kindly, "don't mope about it. Your
+ideas are all right and I'm here to keep you practical. Better luck next
+time, but be sure and come to me."
+
+"Thank you, Doc," said Skippy, through whose dimmed eyes the fatal
+bathtub seemed to advance like a juggernaut. He escaped and went dizzily
+across the Campus and sat on the steps of Memorial Hall, gazing out
+gloomily at the dotted recreation fields. The great Bedelle gymnasium,
+which but yesterday was outlined in splendor against the sky, was now
+cinders and dust, Fifth Avenue further off than Africa, and as for
+Lillian Russell--
+
+"Looking all over for you, Skippy," said a familiar voice.
+
+Before him stood Toots Cortrelle.
+
+"Oh, it's you," he said heavily.
+
+"Are you flush? I thought if you were--that quarter you know--you
+said--"
+
+"I said I should remember," said Skippy, with a hollow laugh. There was
+just twenty cents in his pockets that an hour ago had been heavy with
+millions. He drew out two dimes and tendered them.
+
+"Here's the best I can do, Toots. I'll try to get that other nickel to
+you to-morrow."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+WHEN FRIENDS PROVE FALSE
+
+
+COMMONPLACE minds are crushed by defeat; great imaginations rise to
+profit. Ten days after Skippy Bedelle had seen the gilded fabric of his
+future greatness collapse with the failure of the Foot Regulator to
+revolutionize the bathtub industry the spirit of invention had risen
+triumphantly from the ashes of first disillusionment. After all, there
+were other services to render to humanity, and the mind that at the age
+of fifteen could have reasoned so brilliantly in theory must inevitably
+express itself with profit to the race and to his own individual bank
+account.
+
+At first Skippy's depression had been profound, and as the sensation was
+new he enjoyed its sensual charm to the fullest. He discarded the jaunty
+cap for a slouch hat which he pulled down over his eyes; he selected the
+soberest of neckwear, turned up his collar, sank his fists in his
+pockets, and spent solitary afternoons among the ruins of the Carthage
+of his imagination, seated on the site of what would never be the John
+C. Bedelle Gymnasium. Even the spectacle of Cap Keafer knocking out a
+home run in the ninth inning brought him no rapturous exultation. He was
+akin to _Ivanhoe_, the disinherited knight, and _Athos_ of the brooding
+sorrows. The world had receded from him, and nobody cared or noticed. He
+was alone, misunderstood, without a friend in the world. For after what
+had happened he could never again feel the same towards that basest of
+ingrates, Snorky Green.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The evening after the collapse of the Bedelle Foot Regulator,
+Incorporated, there had been a short and exceedingly painful interview.
+
+"Well, Skippy, old top," said Snorky, who was genuinely contrite and
+ready to make the advance, "that certainly was hard luck. I feel just as
+bad as--" Here he stopped before the sudden majestic indignation which
+confronted him.
+
+"Green!" said Skippy, frowning.
+
+"Oh, I say--"
+
+"Green, when you thought I was going to be a rich man," continued Skippy
+icily, "there was nothing you wouldn't do for me. You fawned on me. But
+when I had to face defeat--at the first test--you deserted me with
+sneers and gibes. That is not friendship. Green, you are not capable of
+true friendship, and you have proved it. I shall never forget and I
+shall never forgive!"
+
+"Oh, shucks, Skippy!" said Snorky. "What's the use of rubbin' it in? I'm
+not as bad as all that!"
+
+"Green," said Skippy, working himself into the scene which he had
+rehearsed a dozen times as he had long debated whether to address the
+offender as Mr. Green, "Green, we will have to go on rooming together
+but I wish you to understand that nothing you can ever do or say will
+change my feelings now towards you. Nothing! Whatever communication is
+necessary from now on between us, will be in _writing_--"
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"In writing," said Skippy firmly.
+
+"Oh, well, if that's the way you're going to take it you can go to
+blazes!" said Snorky wrathfully. "But before you climb on your high
+horse, suppose you restore my red choker tie, my agate cuff buttons, my
+silver-rimmed fountain pen and a few pairs of fancy socks--"
+
+"_This_ is unworthy of even you," said Skippy, who rose and with a
+perfect social manner took the articles in question from the bureau on
+the south side of the room and gingerly placed them on the bureau in the
+western corner. "The socks are in the wash. I prefer to return them as I
+received them." After which he disrobed and, somewhat consoled, watched
+from the coverlets the indignant and bewildered Snorky Green sitting on
+his bedside, halfway out of his trousers, glaring at him in rage.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For a week, a miserable, lonely week, Skippy held to this irreconcilable
+attitude. During this time he touched the bottom of depression--he even
+doubted himself! Would he ever invent anything again? Had it been just a
+flash in the pan? Was it all a false start? What had become of the
+imagination which had blazed up so brilliantly? Perhaps after all he was
+no different from the rest--just an average mind fit only for such
+vulgar things as banking and trade. Then one morning through the gloom
+clouds a sudden shaft of sunlight arrived. He had another idea!
+
+He had been lolling deliciously in bed, disdaining to notice the first
+harsh summons to rise, and his mind had dwelt enviously on the brilliant
+figure of Doc Macnooder. After all, even Doc Macnooder had his failures.
+There was the matter of the Folding Toothbrush, which all Macnooder's
+eloquence had failed to market with Bill Appleby.
+
+"Jingo! That certainly was a bum idea," he said to himself, somewhat
+comforted. "You might do something with a toothbrush, but a folding one
+is a joke!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+All at once he sprang out of bed and, reaching the washstand in a bound,
+seized the nearest tooth mug. Snorky, who, despite the present
+unpleasantness, still trusted his rising instincts, catapulted out of
+bed and arrived three seconds later at his side of the washstand, where
+through still foggy eyes he beheld Skippy gazing at a toothbrush which
+he held reverently before him as a jeweler examines a named stone.
+
+"What the deuce?"
+
+"Dinged if I haven't got Macnooder beat a mile!" exclaimed Skippy, who
+in the first exhilaration of discovery had completely forgotten the
+correspondence acquaintanceship he had imposed.
+
+"It's about a toothbrush!" said Snorky with great intelligence.
+
+"You bet it's about a toothbrush." But here Skippy suddenly remembered,
+and the smile gave place to a frown.
+
+"Oh, I say, Skippy! Let's call it off," said Snorky in a rush of
+feeling. "It was dead rotten of me and I'm doggone sorry--honest, I
+am--but you've rubbed it in enough."
+
+"Very well, I forgive you and I shall try to forget," said Skippy, who
+also had chafed under the long silence.
+
+"What's the great idea?" said Snorky hurriedly.
+
+"The great idea is a _Souvenir_ Toothbrush," said Skippy proudly.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The idea did not reach Snorky immediately, but he was too diplomatic to
+show his disappointment, so he said humbly:
+
+"I suppose it's because I'm a dumb-head, but why a souvenir
+toothbrush?"
+
+"Why a souvenir pillow-case? Why a souvenir buttonhook or a souvenir
+bootjack or a footstool, necktie, lap robe, or anything souvenir?"
+
+"All right, why?" said Snorky, who felt hurt at this assumption of
+intellectual superiority.
+
+"The bootjack doesn't make the souvenir; it's the souvenir makes the
+bootjack, doesn't it?" said Skippy, who was thinking deeply.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Snorky had never heard of the Socratian method, but he was impressed; so
+not understanding, he nodded and answered:
+
+"Aha, I see!"
+
+"It's the thing you souvenir that's important. If you want to remember
+you can't remember too often."
+
+"No-o."
+
+"And how can you remember better than the first crack out of bed--"
+
+"I get all that," said Snorky, acknowledging the brilliancy of the
+argument. "But how the dickens can you make a souvenir out of a
+toothbrush?"
+
+"My boy--my boy!" said Skippy with crushing contempt. "Have you no
+imagination? A souvenir toothbrush! Why, easy! Make the handle in the
+shape of a baseball bat and put the Lawrenceville-Andover score on the
+back--red and black."
+
+"Well, I'll be jiggswiggered!"
+
+"You can make 'em in the form of a riding crop for racing sports, masts
+for yachtsmen, sword-blades for the army. Why, it's a cinch! You can
+have Lawrenceville shields on the back, Princeton colors, Yale colors.
+You can do anything, anything with the idea--you can have your best
+girl's initials, or you can have her photograph stenciled on!"
+
+"Sure thing! Why not Mother or Auntie--'when this you see remember to
+use me!'" said Snorky, who feared where another flight of the
+imagination might transport his roommate.
+
+"Green!" said Skippy, flaring up at this destructive levity; but before
+he could deliver his broadside the breakfast gong began to rock the
+house and simultaneously each head ducked into a waiting basin.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Skippy during the relaxation of the morning recitations considered
+the Souvenir Toothbrush he was not so favorably impressed. Snorky's
+suggestion somehow threw a touch of ridicule over the whole proposition
+and Skippy, like all true imaginations, shrank from ridicule.
+Undoubtedly if the Souvenir Toothbrush became a fact, mothers and
+governesses _would_ abuse its opportunities. Think of a parental eye
+gazing admonishingly at you from the back of a toothbrush every morning!
+Why, the name of Bedelle might become an execration! He saw himself
+pilloried among the oppressors of boykind, as unpopular as the compiler
+of a Latin grammar or the accursed Euclid! No, the idea was unthinkable!
+Skippy did not reject the Souvenir Toothbrush _in toto_. He bought a
+blank book on which he inscribed:
+
+                       INVENTIONS
+                     JOHN C. BEDELLE
+                          1896
+
+On the first page under the day of the month he wrote a full
+description, adding:
+
+                        FIELD LIMITED
+
+          _Suggestion--Hold until later date and patent
+                      anonymously._
+
+Skippy then reluctantly admitted the destructive force of Snorky Green's
+criticism of the Souvenir Toothbrush; he admitted it, but he could not
+forgive him for being right. There are certain things which one does not
+forgive a brother, a sister, or the chum of chums.
+
+After all, was Snorky Green worthy of that privileged and exalted
+position? A disturbing doubt began to creep into Skippy's imagination.
+He passed over the treachery in the matter of the now defunct Bedelle
+Foot Regulator; that might conceivably have been the fault of an
+inferior temperament. It was the spirit of negative criticism, the
+settled habit of turning into raillery the fragile first impulses of his
+inventive imagination, that was alarming.
+
+"Gee! If every time I get a big idea, he's going to knock it in the
+head, what's the use of having an imagination?" he said gloomily.
+
+After all, could a creative temperament yoke itself to a destructive
+criticism without self-immolation? Immersed in these brooding
+forebodings, he came heavily up the Dickinson stairs to the communal
+room. Suddenly he stopped, amazed.
+
+"What the deuce!"
+
+On his bureau a flaming bit of color greeted him from the somber mass of
+his pendent neckties. He advanced and recognized Snorky Green's red
+choker tie, which was particularly dear to his young sartorial fancy. On
+the pin cushion lay the agate cuff buttons and the silver-rimmed
+fountain pen. He opened the top drawer and beheld three pair of
+open-work socks, red, orange and glowing green.
+
+"Gee, how crude!" he said indignantly.
+
+At another moment and in another mood his heart might have softened at
+this evident peace-offering; but this afternoon, with the new child of
+his imagination slain by Snorky Green's brutal wit, the whole proceeding
+was undeniably crude, a bribe too openly offered. He would have to
+return them; that was inevitable and that was of course the last thing
+he wished to do. He sat down at his desk, scowling horribly, and then,
+moved by a fitting inspiration, he seized his pen and dashed off the
+most frigid and properly insulting of notes.
+
+          To Arthur E. Green. Goods Returned.
+            1 Fountain Pen.
+            1 Pair of Agate Cuff Buttons.
+            1 Choker Tie (red).
+            3 Pair of Socks.
+            Kindly acknowledge receipt,
+                                   Bedelle.
+
+The last he considered such a master stroke that, his good humor
+restored by the anticipation of the infuriating effect on his beloved
+friend, he began to whistle a triumphant strain. He made a neat package,
+pinned the ultimatum on it, and proceeded to the opposite bureau.
+
+"Well, I'll be teetotally jiggswiggered," he said, astounded.
+
+In the oval of the glass, a new photograph had appeared in the company
+of the three other smiling feminine beauties which Snorky Green, as a
+man of the world, displayed by implied right of conquest. Skippy set
+down his package and craned forward for a closer examination.
+
+"Huh! Old enough to be his grandmother," he said contemptuously, staring
+at the new victim of Snorky Green's charms.
+
+But at this moment, hearing a familiar step in the hall, he bounded back
+in time to assume a nonchalant, bored attitude as Snorky came joyfully
+in, exclaiming:
+
+"Hello, old sporting life! What do you know to-day?"
+
+"Green," said Skippy, drawing himself up and extending an elocutionary
+finger towards the bureau, "you will find something to interest you
+there."
+
+He waited a moment outside in the hall until Snorky's bursting
+imprecation brought the needed consolation, and then tripped down the
+steps, seeking a calming jigger.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+SNORKY AS A LADY-KILLER
+
+
+"_L'AMOUR a des raisons que la raison connait pas_," say the French, who
+ought to know, and the first expansive sentimental affection of a boy
+for a chum has also its illogical quality. Now, Skippy adored Snorky and
+the affection was returned. He felt that Snorky would die for him, as of
+course he would lay down his own life for his friend, if they should
+ever hunt together in African jungles. He was willing to share Snorky's
+last dime, keep his confidences, and fight shoulder to shoulder. He
+admired, he respected, he loved Snorky, but for the life of him he could
+not see wherein Snorky Green's peculiar brand of beauty should appeal to
+the young feminine eye any more than his own lank frame and sharpened
+features. Why should Snorky's glass present four lovely and adoring
+feminine faces, while his own should give back only a pointed nose
+around which the orange freckles swarmed like flies? True, the
+lady-killer's wardrobe was of a magnificence which outshone his, but
+then socks and neckties and cuff-button jewelry are communal
+possessions.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Why should Snorky Green then inspire such passions while he passed
+lonely and unloved? No, certainly Snorky was not beautiful. He had a
+smudgy, stubby little nose. He was lop-eared and the dank yellow hair
+fell about his puffy eyes in straight, unrippling shocks. Yet four women
+(three blondes and a brunette) watched with affectionate glances the
+progress of his casual morning toilette. Why?
+
+The next morning, as Skippy reluctantly rose and gazed upon the feminine
+galaxy waiting at the bureau that was not his, the sense of his own
+inferiority again smote him. Envy is the corrupting cancer of
+friendship. He did like Snorky. He yearned for the life-and-death
+devotion of a chum of chums; a sort of Damon and Pythias, D'Artagnan and
+Athos affair--but, while this sense of inferiority continued, the shadow
+was over the fair sunlit landscape of impulsive friendship. It was so,
+and the feeling would not down.
+
+That evening, being alone, he stood again contemplating the evidence of
+Snorky Green's predatory progress among the ladies. He examined the four
+photographs carefully.
+
+"They can't all be sisters," he said gloomily; besides, he knew that his
+roommate, more fortunate than he, had to bear but one such cross.
+"Danged if I can see what gets them. If that fellow's a lady charmer,
+I'll hire out for a matinée idol!"
+
+On the pin cushion was a pin in the shape of an arrow (an arrow of
+course suggested a transpierced heart), which Snorky wore for important
+ceremonies, when he donned a perpendicular collar and a white coaching
+tie. On the wall was a Farmington banner and on the sofa five pillows
+worked by loving feminine hands.
+
+"Sisters never go to that trouble," said Skippy, secure in his knowledge
+of sister nature. "By the great horned spoon this can't go on. I've
+either got to lick the stuffin's out of him or--"
+
+Without finishing his phrase, he went to the table, drew forth Cæsar's
+"Gallic Wars," and a copy of "Lorna Doone" and immediately began to
+concentrate. A moment later Snorky Green arrived chuckling from a foray
+down the hall where he had just deposited a moth ball in the lamp
+chimney of Beckstein, the Midnight Poler. He came in rollicking and
+triumphant, slamming and locking the door against a sudden reprisal.
+Then, seeing Skippy, he stiffened, scowled, and assumed an air of frigid
+dignity. Skippy, with his eye on a convenient mirror, followed his
+movements expectantly.
+
+Snorky, having glared sufficiently at the unresponsive back of his
+roommate, planted himself in front of him and said angrily:
+
+"Say, what in tarnation is biting you, anyhow?"
+
+Part of the pleasure which Skippy derived from his periodic application
+of ostracism was in the immediate success it achieved on his roommate's
+impressionable temperament. At present, being in an exceedingly grouchy
+mood, he drew forth a pad and pencil and tendered them with a plain
+intimation that only thus would he receive any communications.
+
+"What are you sore about?" said Snorky, flaring up at once. "Just
+because I took a crack at your old Souvenir Toothbrush? Is that it?"
+
+Skippy drew forth a handy literal translation and ostensibly began to
+apply it to the baffling text.
+
+"My lord, you act like a sick girl! You're a pleasant roommate, you are!
+How long are you going to sulk like this?"
+
+Skippy began to whistle softly to himself:
+
+          "You can't play in my backyard;
+           I don't love you any more."
+
+Whereupon Snorky, having slammed a book on the table, advanced with
+doubled fists, exclaiming:
+
+"You stop that, do you hear! You stop that or--or--I'll--"
+
+Skippy, whose calm was delightfully reinforced by this show of temper,
+again, but without looking up, indicated the pad and pencil.
+
+"I can lick you!" said Snorky hoarsely.
+
+This was too much. Skippy sprang up, fists ready, and glowered his
+defiance. For a long moment they held this bellicose attitude, a
+collision imminent. But a resort to primitive methods is a serious
+affair between roommates. Each hesitated, seeking a dignified evasion of
+the crisis.
+
+"Well, go on with your baby act, if you enjoy it," said Snorky
+scornfully. "Lord, I'd hate to have your disposition!"
+
+The status quo having been restored, Skippy discarded Cæsar's "Gallic
+Perplexities" and returned to boyhood's first heroine, while Snorky in a
+rage retreated to his side of the room and pondered.
+
+"I certainly riled him that time," said Skippy joyfully to himself.
+"Wonder what he'll do now?"
+
+After a few moments Snorky began to whistle, meditating to himself,
+which in boyhood is always a signal that the imagination is working.
+
+"What's the big idea now?" said Skippy, following from the corner of his
+eye.
+
+Snorky rose briskly and, repairing to his closet, disappeared on all
+fours. A moment later he returned, with a box of large and juicy
+chocolate éclairs and a bottle of ginger pop, and, establishing himself
+at the opposite end of the table, began to enjoy himself audibly.
+
+"The low-down hound!" said Skippy, writhing on his seat.
+
+In his calculations, he had completely forgotten the purchase of the
+afternoon. In turn he rose, delved into the débris of his closet and,
+returning, spread before his end of the table one tin of deviled turkey
+(Snorky's favorite), a large piece of American cheese and a bottle of
+root beer.
+
+It had now become a battle of wits, with each resolved to impress the
+other with the delicious satisfaction that he was experiencing and each
+gazing from time to time at a point directly above the other's head.
+There were six éclairs. Snorky ate four rapidly, licking his fingers
+with gusto after each.
+
+Then he ate the fifth éclair more slowly and with some effort. Despite
+all his self-control Skippy's gaze could not turn from that
+last-surviving member of the chocolate family. He was suffering
+tortures, but suffering under a calm and smiling exterior.
+
+"Hello!" said Snorky suddenly, talking to himself. "I almost forgot."
+
+He rose and left the room to Skippy and the sixth éclair. Tantalus, amid
+his parched seeking of a cooling draught, never suffered more anguish
+than Skippy sitting there before that undefended éclair, with only a
+gesture intervening.
+
+"Of all the mean, dirty, contemptible tricks!" he said angrily between
+his teeth, revolting at this most treacherous trap. For he must not, he
+could not, no matter what the pain he must endure, admit defeat by
+falling on that éclair. He rose and went to the window. Certainly he had
+been mistaken in Snorky; no one who would carry a quarrel to such
+fiendish lengths had the largeness of spirit that he had the right to
+demand in a chum.
+
+When Snorky returned, he glanced in some surprise at the untouched
+éclair. Then he lifted it gingerly, examined it closely to see if it
+contained any foreign corrupting matter, and, his appetite restored by
+the lapse of time, ate it with smacking relish.
+
+Skippy, crouched in his chair, ground his teeth and tried to shut out
+the tantalizing sounds. Snorky began to hum gaily to himself. Then,
+proceeding across the direct line of his roommate's vision, he took up
+the latest photograph and contemplated it with a little exaggerated
+rapture. It was the last straw. Skippy's rage burst forth in a loud and
+insulting guffaw.
+
+"Ha, ha!"
+
+Snorky, to whom the advantage of the situation was now apparent, took up
+each photograph in turn and smiled with the pardonable pride of one who
+knows his own worth.
+
+The next moment two books went flying across the room, and Skippy, now
+thoroughly infuriated, stood before him, arms akimbo, a sneer on his
+disgusted lips.
+
+"Don't let me stop you. Go on, kiss it, fondle it. Put it under your
+pillow and hug it, you great big mooncalf! Say, why do you come to
+Lawrenceville, anyhow? Why don't you go to Ogontz or Dobbs Ferry?"
+
+Then Snorky, tasting the sweets of revenge, went to the table and,
+picking up the pad and pencil, presented them to Skippy with a mocking
+bow.
+
+Skippy's reply is not to be found even in the most up-to-date
+dictionaries. Furious at his roommate, the world in general, and himself
+most of all, he shed his clothes and dived into bed.
+
+"Girls--faugh!" he exclaimed in disgust And, pulling the covers over his
+head, he retired to his own ruminations.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+LOVE LIGHTLY CONSIDERED
+
+
+TO understand what Skippy felt one must have known the springs of
+boyhood's impulse towards perfect manhood.
+
+To Skippy a man was that completed being, who wore trousers that never
+bagged at the knees, neckties that never slipped below the collar
+button, who displayed a gold watch-chain across a fancy vest, from whose
+lower lip a cigarette was pendent, who possessed a latchkey and the
+right to read far into the night, and who shaved once a day. The
+sentimental complications had escaped him. Whatever attracted man to the
+frizzled, giggling, smirking, smiling bipeds in shirts remained a
+mystery to Skippy.
+
+All at once he had to face this problem. He had gone resolutely up the
+steps towards perfect manhood. He had learned the art of pressing
+trousers to a thin razor-edge from Snorky, who was a year his senior in
+boarding-school knowledge.
+
+The necktie question was not yet settled, though every morning he
+subjected his throat to a strangle-hold.
+
+He had bought a razor and twice a week, trembling and apprehensive, drew
+it across his maidenly cheek. He slashed himself fearfully but he did
+not mind that. He wore his scars proudly, a warning to all that
+adolescence was on him, as the young Heidelberg student flaunts his
+wounds.
+
+The cigarette (known as the Demon Cigarette, the Filthy Weed, and the
+Coffin Nail) had been a dreadful struggle. But he had won out.
+
+He loathed the Demon Cigarette as he abhorred tobacco in any form, but
+he had martyrized himself until he was able to puff up the cold-air flue
+in the stilly reaches of the night without having to grope his way back
+to the bed and watch the room careen about him. He did not inhale, but
+he had learned to imitate the process so as to defy detection, as he
+exclaimed:
+
+"Gee! It's good to fill the old lungs, isn't it?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+These things, by dint of concentration and courage, Skippy had achieved,
+not to stand ashamed in the eyes of his roommate. And, having with pain
+and perseverance traveled this far, he suddenly, this night, realized
+how much was still lacking.
+
+Yes, there was certainly something lacking in his progress towards
+perfect manhood, something that Snorky had and he had not.
+
+It was all very well to be a man, to smoke, to shave, and to have
+acquired the sartorial evidence. This was all very well--but others
+must perceive it, too! This was the point. As Snorky had done, he must
+do.
+
+The new world to conquer was the feminine heart.
+
+Now, Skippy had not at this moment the slightest inclination towards the
+lovelier sex.
+
+He did not aspire to be a Don Juan or a Beau Brummel, but if he were to
+continue to room with Snorky Green he must acquire at least the
+appearance. He perceived this. It pained him that in the scheme of
+things it should be so--but a reputation he must have.
+
+"Girls, girls! Lord, how I loathe them!" he said in a last farewell to
+his male independence. "What I think of a fellow who hangs around them,
+wears their rings and pins and carries off their handkerchiefs! But I'll
+be danged if I can stand any more of this conquering-hero stuff from
+that eyesore across the room! If it's got to be done, you bet I'll do
+it! I'll put it over that four-flusher, if I have to fuss every girl in
+Scranton!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE DEMON OF JEALOUSY
+
+
+THE Easter vacation was ended and four hundred overfed, underslept boys
+had returned to spread the germs of measles, mumps and tonsilitis among
+their fellows. Skippy and Snorky, having fallen hilariously into each
+other's arms, were proceeding with the important ceremony of the
+unpacking, while surveying each other with a critical eye.
+
+"Seems to me you look quite spruced up," said Snorky when, to be more at
+his ease, Skippy had shed his coat and stood revealed in all the
+splendor of a flaming-yellow buckskin vest, with gleaming brass buttons;
+then noting the display of jewelry in the red and yellow tie, he added:
+"Where did you get the fancy stuff?"
+
+Skippy removed his scarf-pin and gazed languidly at the delicate garland
+of forget-me-nots. Then he yawned and said:
+
+"I'll tell you about her some day."
+
+Snorky sat down on his best derby. "My aunt's cat's pants! Have I lived
+to see it?"
+
+"See what?" said Skippy loftily.
+
+"You a fusser! Skippy Bedelle wearing a girl's pin! Fan me quick!"
+
+"Just because I haven't boasted about my conquests--" said Skippy, and
+he brought forth a little bundle carefully wrapped in a green bandana
+handkerchief.
+
+"What's that?" said Snorky faintly.
+
+From beneath the protecting folds of the handkerchief appeared a white
+satin frame with hand-painted violets rampant. Out of the violets gazed
+an adoring pair of eyes.
+
+"Is that her?" said Snorky.
+
+"Lord, no! This is only Margot," said Skippy, who inhaled the fragrance
+and offered the same opportunity to his chum. "Rather delicate, eh,
+what?"
+
+"Smells like patchouli," said Snorky, beginning to recover.
+
+"Patchouli? Margot? Say, what kind of females do you play around with?
+My girls drive their own four-in-hands and wear pearls for breakfast."
+
+"Oh, ex-cuse me!" said Snorky with a mocking courtesy.
+
+Skippy brought forth a second photograph and placed it on the bureau,
+and then a third. Snorky, who had begun to sulk, feigned indifference
+and proceeded to range _his_ trophies on the bureau.
+
+"This'll cheer up the window seat a bit," said Skippy in the same casual
+tone.
+
+Snorky's head appeared above the trunk long enough to watch Skippy with
+his arms full of pillows, lace and sweet-scented, scatter them with a
+nonchalant gesture. But when, continuing his manoeuvres, Skippy in the
+new revelation produced three banners emblazoned with the insignia of
+feminine schools, Snorky capitulated to his curiosity and, advancing to
+the bureau, stood in open-mouthed wonder.
+
+"I'll be jiggswiggered! Holy cats and Aunt Jemima! I never would have
+believed it!"
+
+Skippy brought out a fan, spread it, and pinned it affectionately above
+the photograph gallery.
+
+"I guess that'll hold him," he said to himself. "Poor old Snorky! I hope
+his heart is strong enough."
+
+"Been doing quite a bit of fussing yourself," said Snorky with a new
+respect. "Why didn't you ever tell a fellow?"
+
+"I never discuss women," said Skippy, dusting off the fourth photograph.
+
+"You must have gone the pace," said Snorky in wonder.
+
+"Oh, I looked them over quite a bit."
+
+"But, my lord, Skippy! You can't have loved all of them!"
+
+"Just collecting souvenirs."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As a crowning touch, a climax long imagined, plotted and hilariously
+enjoyed in prospect, he next produced, before the bewildered eyes of
+Snorky Green, what in school-day parlance is known as a Trophy of
+Trophies; an incredible, amazing, inexplicable thing, a tasseled,
+beribboned, pink and white bed cap! Snorky made a feeble gesture or two
+and then lay down to signify that the shock had killed him.
+
+"Skippy! What does that mean?"
+
+"This also is a thing I cannot discuss," said Skippy, whose fondest
+imaginings were outdone by reality.
+
+"Any more?" said Snorky, struggling weakly upward.
+
+"That's all," said Skippy, who was gazing contentedly at the imposing
+collection. But all at once he reflected: "Hello, where in the deuce did
+I put her?"
+
+He pretended to search through his trunk and valise in great concern
+until, Snorky's curiosity having been properly awakened, he suddenly
+struck his forehead.
+
+"Of course. How silly of me!"
+
+And diving into his inner pocket he brought forth a last tribute,
+encased in neat pink morocco, which he arranged in the unmistakable
+position of honor.
+
+Snorky approached on tenterhooks. The next moment he burst out: "Mimi!"
+
+"What, you know her!" said Skippy, surprised in turn. "Rather cute
+little thing."
+
+"Look!"
+
+On Snorky's bureau in the same place of honor was an identical
+photograph, a little Japanese brunette, with a descending puff and an
+ascending nose. They stood staring at each other, and the temperature of
+the room seemed to recede towards the freezing point.
+
+"When did you meet her? How long have you known her, and how the deuce
+did you get her photo?" said Snorky, with blazing eyes.
+
+Skippy was in a quandary. A false step might tumble about him the
+glorious fabric of his new reputation. He went to his bureau and
+thoughtfully considered the pink morocco case stolen from his sister's
+collection. Revenge had been sweet, yet the impulse was still on him. He
+decided that a quick conquest would be the more galling to a rival's
+pride.
+
+"Oh, we waltzed about a bit, but I gave her an awful rush."
+
+Snorky went and sat down in a corner, elbows on his knees, his chin in
+his hands. Seeing thus the wreck he had caused, Skippy began to be
+troubled by his conscience. Suppose it really was a serious affair.
+Wouldn't it be nobler to surrender the fictitious conquest to his
+beloved friend, to adopt a sacrificial attitude and allow Snorky to go
+in and win her?
+
+"I say, old boy, I'm awfully sorry; do you really care?"
+
+"For Mimi Lafontaine? For a girl that can't tell a man from a cabbage?
+Ha, ha!"
+
+All kindly feelings vanished.
+
+"What's the good of calling yourself names?" said Skippy crushingly. He
+picked up the photograph and smiled at it. "Mimi is a flirt, but she has
+her good points."
+
+"Look here!" said Snorky, rising in sudden fury. "There's one question
+has got to be answered right now."
+
+"And pray what is that?" said Skippy, resting one elbow on the top of
+the bed and crossing his legs to show his perfect calm.
+
+Snorky planted himself before the bureau and extended his hand in a
+furious gesture towards the lace bed cap that now adorned the top.
+
+"Does or does not _that_ belong to Miss Lafontaine?"
+
+"Any one who would lower himself to ask such a question," said Skippy,
+still in a stage attitude, "does not deserve my sympathy. I would have
+given her up. Now I shall keep her."
+
+"Oh, you think she cares for you, you chump?"
+
+"I do not discuss women."
+
+The gauntlet had been thrown down and the demon of jealousy took up his
+abode with the _ménage_ Bedelle and Green. For a week the comedy
+continued, while conversation was reduced to a minimum and transmitted
+in writing along the lines of Skippy's imagining. Each watched the
+other's correspondence with a jealous eye. Whenever Skippy received a
+letter from home, he ostensibly hugged it to his shirt-front and,
+repairing to a corner, read it furtively with the pink morocco case
+before him. Afterward he would execute a double shuffle across the room,
+whistle a hilarious strain, and give every facial contortion which could
+express a lover's joy, while Snorky squirmed and scowled and pretended
+not to notice. Snorky in turn retaliated by writing long letters after
+hours by the light of a single candle, ruffling up his hair and
+breathing audibly. In the morning Skippy, passing towards the washstand,
+would see on the table a swollen envelope, addressed:
+
+                          Miss Mimi Lafontaine,
+                               Farmington,
+                                  Conn.
+
+These letters troubled him. When a fellow could write over four pages it
+certainly must be serious, and these looked as though they held forty.
+The trouble was that Skippy had begun to believe in his own passion. The
+little Japanese brunette had become a reality to him. He had talked with
+her, walked with her, received the avowal of her own uncontrollable
+impulse towards him. In fact, at times he almost believed that he had
+actually held her in his arms and whirled in the dizzy intoxication of
+the waltzes he had announced. He even was able to feel a real pang of
+jealousy, a fierce and contending antagonism against Snorky, who
+actually knew her. Such a situation was of course fraught with too many
+explosive possibilities to long endure. Fortunately Fate stepped in and
+preserved the friendship.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL
+
+
+A WEEK after these events, returning on a Saturday morning from the last
+vexations of the curriculum with the expectant thrill of the opening of
+the baseball season, Skippy was amazed to receive, by the hands of
+Klondike, the colored sweep, a scribbled note in the familiar
+handwriting of his sister:
+
+          DEAR JACK:
+
+          Miss Green and I and a party of girls are down for
+          the game. We're at the Lodge. Come right over and
+          bring Arthur.
+
+                                                  SIS.
+
+His first emotion was one of horror; had they been up to the room, and
+was his duplicity forever at the mercy of a sister's gibes? Klondike
+reassured him. He bounded upstairs, made a hasty survey, found
+everything in order, and hastily departed for the Lodge, after a quick
+plunge into the glorious buckskin vest, a struggle into a clean collar
+and a hurried dusting off of his shoes against the window seat. He
+reached the parlors of the Lodge on the heels of Snorky Green, who,
+being as thoroughly bored by the prospect as he, forgot the week's feud
+in a common misery.
+
+"Gee! Aren't sisters the limit?"
+
+"Well, we're in for it."
+
+"Let's hope they clear out before dinner."
+
+The next moment Skippy was perfunctorily pecking at the cheek of Miss
+Clara Bedelle and pretending to be overjoyed at the prospect of parading
+before the assembled school with six young ladies in tow. Then he looked
+up and something like a cataleptic fit went through his body.
+
+Directly in front of him, evidently waiting for the introduction, was
+unmistakably Miss Mimi Lafontaine! He looked at Snorky and saw the same
+expression of horror over his pudgy features, as he came up, knees
+shaking, to be introduced in turn.
+
+Then to Snorky's distressed soul came the welcome sound:
+
+"Jack, dear, I want you to meet Mimi--Miss Lafontaine."
+
+To the amazement of sisters and friends, said Snorky, advancing with
+outstretched hand:
+
+"Hello, you old Skippy!"
+
+Skippy clung to it as to a spar in midstream.
+
+"Snorky, old dear--it's all right."
+
+"It is?"
+
+"You bet it is!"
+
+"What are you idiotic boys doing?" said Sister Green.
+
+"Shall we tell?" asked Snorky roguishly.
+
+"Women have no sense of humor," said Skippy, grinning with a great
+easement of the soul.
+
+At this moment they rose above the vexations of the female intrusion.
+They looked at each other and each comprehended the other. They were
+equals, equal in imagination, in audacity and expedient. This mutual
+revelation cleared away all past misunderstanding and jealousies. The
+sense of humor was triumphant. They loved each other.
+
+A half-hour later, having, to the utter amazement of sister No. 1 and
+sister No. 2, rolled hilariously, arms locked, across the campus, they
+lay on opposite beds, struggling weakly to master the pangs of laughter
+which smote them like the colic.
+
+"Are we going to tell our real names?" said Skippy at last.
+
+"Let's."
+
+"You know, Bo, you certainly had me going--you certainly did. And all
+these months, too! Snorky, I bow before you."
+
+"Allow me," said Snorky admiringly.
+
+"Say! You're all right, but honest now," said Skippy, pointing to
+Snorky's bureau and the feminine galaxy, "honest, who are they?"
+
+"Well, of course one's my sister," said Snorky, grinning. "I swiped
+these three and I bought the other with the frame. Say, I'm not worried
+about how you got yours, but what I'd like to know is, who in tarnation
+belongs to that boudoir cap?"
+
+"My grandmother, and she's a corker, too!"
+
+They clasped hands and Snorky announced solemnly:
+
+"Skippy, old fellow, let 'em have all their old skirts; there's nothing
+like the real thing, the man-to-man stuff, is there?"
+
+"You bet there isn't."
+
+"And say, I'm sorry about that souvenir toothbrush, honest I am, and I
+think you're a wonder, I do."
+
+"Oh, that's all right. That's all right," said Skippy, embarrassed.
+"There's a lot of money in it, but I guess I prefer to make my pile in
+other ways."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+A WOMAN OF THE WORLD
+
+
+NOW that the Snorky-Skippy friendship had been placed on the firm rock
+of mutual revelation and all unfounded jealousies swept away by frank
+confession, Skippy's imagination returned to the real purpose of life.
+He was a little ashamed of the time wasted on the opposite sex, even if
+for a worthy purpose. Such frailties were all very well for Shrimp Davis
+and the Triumphant Egghead, who had legs educated for the ballroom, but
+he, John C. Bedelle, had other missions to perform in this life which
+held such short years for a man of imagination.
+
+For several days he sought diligently among the needs of human nature
+for something on the grand scale. He tried his hand at a
+perpetual-motion machine. He thought out a combination submarine and
+airship which would put the navies of the world at the mercy of his
+country. He even descended to such trivial abstractions as a Reversible
+Shirt-Front, which took its due place in the book of inventions under
+the following entry:
+
+                     REVERSIBLE SHIRT-FRONT
+
+          Argument: Admitted that Reversible Shirt-Fronts
+          are easy to manufacture; what demand would there
+          be for them? Could they be popularized among the
+          working classes? Treat cuffs same way.
+
+For certain reasons he decided not to discuss this last invention with
+Snorky Green. These tentative efforts were but exercising his
+imagination. He knew it and waited breathlessly.
+
+But at last, a month after the failure of the Foot-Regulator, the
+long-awaited thrill arrived, the thrill which comes only with the
+possession of a Universal Idea, and for the first time in his long,
+untroubled fifteen years, it arrived in conjunction with the intrusion
+into his still simple scheme of things of that arch-disturber--WOMAN.
+
+Miss Virginia Dabtree was not destined to occupy the proud place of the
+first love, though Miss Dabtree (who was Snorky Green's aunt) was
+eminently equipped for such a position, being eighteen years his senior
+and at an age when by instinct, habit, and a need of self-encouragement,
+any tribute from the opposite sex, no matter how given, caused her not
+the slightest irritation.
+
+Skippy, however, was too completely dazzled by the consummate artistry
+of Miss Dabtree's clinging toilettes, the built-up luxuriousness of her
+hair, the pink and white complexion, the stenciled eyebrows, and the
+Lady Vere de Vere attitudes to dare to entertain a personal hope.
+
+He was dazzled, dumfounded! A new world opened to him. Through her at
+last he perceived woman, her place in the now more complex scheme of
+things, the influence she could exert, the stimulus to the imagination,
+and the answer to his need of some guiding purpose.
+
+True, Miss Dabtree's age was her protection. She was removed from even
+the flights of his imagination, yet the influence she exerted all
+unwittingly over his life was inestimable. For it was for her, to
+protect her, that he, Skippy Bedelle, conceived his magnum opus, the
+Mosquito-Proof Socks.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The hour was eight, the day Sunday, the time the first clear week in
+June. They sat together on the porch of the Kennedy, listening to the
+sound of the Upper House singing rising clearly above the twang of
+banjos across the campus from the esplanade.
+
+The long twilight had set in, yet the afterglow hung brilliantly about
+them. Skippy was balanced gingerly on the front edge of a rocker which
+swayed perilously under him and added to his general discomfort. There
+was a safe straight-backed stationary chair only ten feet away, but to
+save his life he could think of no legitimate excuse for rising and
+possessing it. If he leaned back the sharp upright collar, borrowed from
+Dennis de Brian de Boru Finnegan, cut cruelly into his chin, and when he
+craned forward the red choker tie (restored by Snorky in addition to the
+agate cuff buttons) bulged forth in the most disconcerting and
+unimpressive luxuriance.
+
+"You've known Snorky, that is, Arthur, a long time, haven't you?" he
+said desperately, breathing hard.
+
+"Why, you funny boy! I'm his aunt," said Miss Dabtree, laughing.
+
+"Oh, yes!" He felt he had offended her mortally, so to repair his social
+blunder he said point-blank: "Gee! Some fellows are born lucky!"
+
+"Now that is sweet of you," she said, giving him the full effect of her
+heavenly smile. "But I'm afraid you're a terrible flatterer."
+
+"Shall I tell her about the Foot Regulator?" thought Skippy, who felt
+the need of confiding his life's ambition.
+
+But at this moment Destiny arrived in the shape of a mosquito that
+registered its coming on one of Skippy's open-work socks. Skippy shook
+his foot uneasily, just enough to disturb the intruder but not enough to
+attract Miss Dabtree's attention. The mosquito transferred its
+operations to the other sock. Skippy, in order to conceal his
+predicament, slowly crossed his legs and then hastily uncrossed them,
+not being quite sure of the etiquette of such a position.
+
+The mosquito, pursuing its way, lighted on the graceful silver-sheened
+stocking which Skippy had been contemplating furtively for the last ten
+minutes with a sudden realization that the feminine ankle has certain
+strange sentimental values utterly different from those for which his
+and Snorky Green's were created.
+
+[Illustration: "Good gracious!" cried Miss Dabtree with an impetuous
+lunge towards the point of attack. _Page 78_]
+
+But immediately a terrible dilemma arose. How was he to act? In another
+moment the beautiful creature so perfumingly close to him would notice
+the intruder, might even retreat before the menace of more mosquitoes,
+and the rapturous twilight opportunity for opening his confidence would
+pass forever. His instinct was all to protect her. But how? To slap at
+the insect with his cap or his hand was unthinkable. He found himself
+blushing at the very thought! Yet how to warn her without acknowledging
+that his attention had been concentrated on the lower graceful
+silhouette? He might offend her irreparably. Even if he exclaimed, "Look
+out, there's a 'skeeter,'" what would he answer if she in her innocence
+should ask, "Where?"
+
+As he debated this, hot and cold, the inevitable happened.
+
+"Good gracious!" cried Miss Dabtree with an impetuous lunge towards the
+point of attack, which made Skippy modestly avert his gaze. "This place
+is filled with mosquitoes. We never can sit here!"
+
+She rose and led the way to the parlor.
+
+"Won't you come and wait for Arthur?"
+
+"Thanks, thanks awfully; much obliged," said Skippy, gulping down his
+disappointment. He tripped against the foot-scraper and made a mess
+of opening the door for her. He wanted above all things in the world to
+follow her in and be permitted just for a few more wonderful minutes to
+sit and gaze at her loveliness. But to admit this was impossible.
+Whatever happened, she must never suspect, never! So at loss for an
+excuse he stammered, "I'd love to, but really I ought to get back for
+study hour."
+
+A moment later, having backed and scraped down the steps and thanked her
+profusely for some indefinite thing for which she ought to be thanked,
+he went rushing around the corner, let himself in by King Lentz's
+window, and surreptitiously gained his room. At last, having torn off
+the red choker tie and freed his neck, back once more to the ease of
+bachelor attire, he returned wrathfully to the pest which had perhaps
+saved him from his first sentimental excursion.
+
+Sunk in a cushioned armchair, his slippered feet on the desk, a bottle
+of cooling ginger pop in one hand and a cream puff in the other, he
+placed before his imagination the problem:
+
+"Why the mosquito?"
+
+The more he pondered the more he became impressed with the fact that
+here indubitably was one of the errors of the Almighty. Snakes destroyed
+rats and mice at least, but what earthly purpose was served by
+mosquitoes?
+
+He knew, as all smatterings of outer information reached him via the
+weekly lecture course, that besides being a stinging annoyance to the
+human race, the mosquito was a breeder of plagues and had to be fought
+in southern climes. Having wrathfully considered his subject and come to
+the conclusion that no mitigating circumstances could exist, he next put
+to himself this problem:
+
+"If the mosquito cannot be exterminated, can it be neutralized? If so,
+how?"
+
+When Snorky Green, to whom Miss Dabtree was more aunt than woman, came
+bursting in an hour later, with the rebellious consciousness of having
+thoroughly earned the five-dollar bill which lay in the safest of
+pockets, he stopped short at the sight of his roommate in that reclining
+concentration which Sherlock Holmes has popularized, the briar pipe
+being replaced by a large pencil, on which Skippy was chewing in heavy
+meditation.
+
+"I say, Skippy, the old girl certainly came up handsome!" said Snorky
+gleefully, searching for the bill.
+
+"Sh--sh!" said Skippy without turning.
+
+"What the deuce?"
+
+"I want to think."
+
+"Danged if he isn't inventing something else!" said Snorky, who went on
+tiptoe to a position where he could study the frowning outward signs of
+the mental disturbances which were undoubtedly working inwardly. At the
+end of a silent hour, Skippy condescended to relax.
+
+"Well!" said Snorky excitedly.
+
+Skippy rose with dignity and went to the window, gazing out a moment
+into the darkling night where unknown myriads of mosquitoes lurked all
+unconscious of the doom impending over them.
+
+"I say, Skippy, what's the big idea?"
+
+"It's big--bigger than anything you ever imagined," said Skippy
+impressively.
+
+"Aren't you going to tell a fellow!"
+
+"Perhaps."
+
+Now Snorky was not without a certain knowledge of human nature,
+particularly Skippy-nature, so without further interest he proceeded to
+disrobe, flipping the five-dollar bill on the table with a rakish
+gesture and saying carelessly:
+
+"The old gal has a heart, anyhow. However, ta-ta for the night."
+
+Five minutes later Skippy spoke from the depths of his bed.
+
+"Snorky, I'll tell you this much."
+
+There was a convulsion among the opposite sheets and Snorky sat up.
+
+"Go on, I'm listening!"
+
+"It's bigger than bathtubs."
+
+"You don't say so!"
+
+"Snorky, it's--"
+
+"It's what?"
+
+"It's mosquitoes!"
+
+Accustomed as Snorky had become to the young inventor's cryptic methods,
+his imagination refused to follow.
+
+"You don't see?"
+
+"How the deuce should I see?"
+
+"Snorky, I'm going to put the mosquito out of business!"
+
+"How in tarnation!"
+
+"When I get through with him," said Skippy loftily, "when my plans are
+perfected--he'll starve to death!"
+
+"Oh, say! Skippy, is that all you're going to tell me?"
+
+"That is all for to-night," said Skippy, who, seizing a slipper, flung
+it across the room at the evening's candle after the methods introduced
+by the lamented Hickey Hicks, and plunged the room into darkness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE PLOT AGAINST THE MOSQUITO
+
+
+IF close association had brought to Snorky a canny knowledge of his
+roommate's need of unbosoming himself of a great idea, it had also
+acquainted Skippy with the profit to be derived from Snorky's
+overwhelming curiosity, particularly when there were any symptoms of
+ready cash.
+
+The next afternoon, therefore, without being unduly surprised, he
+accepted an invitation to accompany Mr. Snorky Green to the home of the
+Conovers up the road, where the record for pancakes at one continuous
+sitting stood at forty-nine to the honor (without challengers) of the
+Hon. Hungry Smeed.
+
+Somewhere between the fourteenth and fifteenth pancake, having
+solicitously offered the maple syrup, Snorky said casually:
+
+"That's a jim-dandy idea of yours, old horse, about mosquitoes."
+
+"I'm looking at it from all sides."
+
+This answer did not satisfy Snorky Green's thirst for information, so he
+said encouragingly:
+
+"It's a great idea. You must."
+
+"Heard of Luther Burbank and what he does with plants?"
+
+"Sure, that was in last week's lecture. Seedless fruit and all that sort
+of thing."
+
+"Snorky," said Skippy meditatively, "who knows but some day a scientist
+will cross the mosquito with a butterfly?"
+
+"What good'll that do?"
+
+"It would take the sting out of the mosquito, wouldn't it?"
+
+"Suppose it put it into the butterfly."
+
+"If you're going to be facetious--" said Skippy, who, being sufficiently
+fed, rose with dignity, glad of the opportunity to postpone the
+discussion to another appetizing sitting.
+
+For a week Snorky Green, greatly impressed by the concentrated moodiness
+of his chum's attitude, artfully fed him with pancakes, éclairs, Turkish
+paste, and late at night tempted him with deviled chicken and saltines
+to be washed down with ginger pop and root beer.
+
+Skippy, having calculated nicely the possibilities of the exchequer,
+threw out progressively dark, mysterious hints that fed Snorky's
+curiosity, without any open gift of his confidence. Even Doc Macnooder,
+aware by all outward signs that the imagination which had conceived of
+the Foot Regulator was again fermenting, had laid his arm about his
+shoulders and led him to the Jigger Shop.
+
+But the Skippy Bedelle, who had assumed the trials and tribulations of
+manhood, had profited by the first disillusionments. The trusting,
+childlike faith was gone forever and in his new, skeptical attitude
+towards human nature--Toots Cortrelle excepted--he had determined to
+part with as few millions as possible.
+
+"I say, Skippy, how's it working out?" said Snorky at eleven P.M.,
+producing the crackers and cheese, after having blinded the windows and
+hung a blanket over the telltale cracks of the door.
+
+"Fine!"
+
+"Is that all you're going to tell me?" said Snorky with his hand on the
+cheese.
+
+"Not yet, but soon," said Skippy, whose appetite always betrayed his
+caution.
+
+"In that case I serve notice right here I'm through with the financing!"
+
+"The financing!"
+
+"What else do you call it?" said Snorky indignantly, producing the last
+two quarters from his pocket, and restoring the cheese to its box.
+
+"All that will go down to your credit account," said Skippy in a
+conciliatory tone. "I'll tell you this much. There's nothing in the
+butterfly idea--it would take too long."
+
+"Huh! You didn't think I bit on that! Well, how're you going to clean
+'em up? They destroy 'em in Cuba with kerosene--I've been reading up. Is
+it something like that?"
+
+"Destroy them, why destroy them?" said Skippy reprovingly.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"If you destroy mosquitoes you destroy your income, you poor boob," said
+Skippy with his superior manner. "Let 'em live--who profits? I do."
+
+Snorky rose and produced the Bible.
+
+"Come on," he said, in a fever of excitement. "I'm ready. Give me the
+oath."
+
+"You'll take the oath on my own terms!" said Skippy, looking at him
+fixedly.
+
+"What do you mean, terms?"
+
+"Snorky, it's so big it may take years of investigation, you
+understand--"
+
+"Sure."
+
+"This time I'm not giving up any fifty-one per cent."
+
+"Let her go!"
+
+"And if any one goes in they go in on a salary!"
+
+"Oho! I see."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"All right, I'll swear," said Snorky, after a brief wrestling between
+his curiosity and his financial instincts.
+
+"It may be years working out," said Skippy sadly. "Maybe our children
+will live to see it; but Snorky, some day, I'm telling you, when the
+idea is perfected, the mosquito is going to starve to death!"
+
+Snorky, without waiting to be prompted, hurriedly took an oath to guard
+the secret from man woman and child and called down the scourges of
+Jehovah on his nearest of kin if he should ever prove false.
+
+"Snorky," said Skippy, folding his arms behind him and spreading his
+legs after the manner ascribed to the famous Corsican, "where do
+mosquitoes bite you the most?"
+
+"Golly! Where don't they?" said Snorky, who, thus reminded, began to
+scratch back of his ears.
+
+"Where do they bite where you can't hear them coming?"
+
+"Legs and ankles," said Snorky instantly.
+
+"Bright boy--you're getting closer."
+
+"Danged if I can see it."
+
+"Protect the ankles and the mosquito starves--am I right?"
+
+"Hurry up," said Snorky, who by this time recognized that the first
+reasoning processes were simply eliminatory.
+
+"That was my problem," said Skippy, frowning impressively. "Here is the
+answer--this is how it came to me." He went to the bureau and passed his
+hand into a sock, two fingers projecting through the devastated regions.
+"What do you call this?"
+
+"That--that's my sock."
+
+"You call 'em hole-proof socks," said Skippy, ignoring the aspersion.
+"You get it? You don't? Suppose we change it, suppose we use the same
+organization but call it--Mosquito-Proof Socks."
+
+"Mosquito-Proof Socks!" said Snorky in a whisper.
+
+Skippy, satisfied at the staggering effect produced, stood with a smile
+waiting for the full result.
+
+"But, Skippy, is it--possible?" said Snorky faintly when he had brought
+his lower jaw back under control.
+
+"That's not the way to look at it," said Skippy impatiently. "Is the
+idea A No. 1, or is it not?"
+
+"The idea? My aunt's cat's pants--the idea!" said Snorky all in a
+breath, "Mosquito-Proof Socks! Why, it's--it's--it's--" But here Snorky
+stopped, nonplussed, having exhausted his supply of adjectives on the
+Foot Regulator.
+
+"It is!" said Skippy firmly.
+
+"But won't they be too heavy?"
+
+"What the deuce--"
+
+"Why, they'd have to be regular bullet-proof, wouldn't they?"
+
+"Say! What do you think I'm talking about--Tin Socks?"
+
+"Why, I thought--"
+
+"Listen! This is the way you get at it," said Skippy, walking up and
+down in ponderous concentration but pausing from time to time to dip
+into the cheese. "You begin by looking at it from the point of view of
+the mosquito. A mosquito has got nerves, hasn't he, just like a horse or
+a cat or a bullfrog?"
+
+"Sure he has."
+
+"What frightens a mosquito most?"
+
+"Is it a joke?" said Snorky thoughtfully.
+
+"Green--"
+
+"I apologize," said Snorky hastily, and he brought out a bottle of
+sarsaparilla.
+
+"A horse shies at a bit of paper; a sneeze will scare a cat, won't it?
+Well, then, what will scare a mosquito--it's all there!"
+
+"Well, what _will_ scare a mosquito?" said Snorky, wide-eyed.
+
+"That is the field of investigation," said Skippy in a melancholy voice.
+
+"But you said Mosquito-Proof Socks!"
+
+"I did. Suppose a harsh sound annoys a mosquito; all you've got to do is
+to suspend a tiny rusty bell--"
+
+"I don't like that," said Snorky instantly.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"It doesn't sound modest--"
+
+"That is probably not the way," said Skippy, dismissing this objection
+with a wave of his hand. "I'm thorough, that's all. Supposing there are
+certain colors that scare him or make him seasick--red and purple or
+yellow and violet."
+
+"By jingo! Now you're talking."
+
+"Suppose the mosquito has some deadly enemy. Then all you've got to do
+is to work his picture into the design of the socks."
+
+"Holy cats!"
+
+"Supposin' it's just the sense of smell you get him by--"
+
+"Citronella!" fairly shouted Snorky.
+
+"Hush!" said Skippy, alarmed at the outbreak.
+
+"Citronella!" said Snorky in a whisper.
+
+"You see? Mosquito-Proof Socks is the idea--and there must be fifty ways
+of working it out."
+
+"Cheese it!" said Snorky, dousing the light at a sound in the hall.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At a point somewhere between the witching hour and the dawn Snorky said
+in a tentative whisper:
+
+"Hey there, Skippy! Are you awake?"
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"Gosh! Skippy, I can't sleep. It's just steaming around in my brain!"
+
+"M. P. S.?"
+
+"You bet. I can't see anything but them, millions of them!"
+
+"Mosquitoes?"
+
+"No--legs! Holy Jemima! Skippy, have you thought how many legs there are
+in the world? Why, in the United States alone twice ninety-two million.
+Think of it! And what'll they average in socks and stockings? I've been
+trying to work it out all night. Gee! My head's just cracking. If you
+multiply twice ninety-two million by seven pair of socks or even six--"
+
+"Don't!" said Skippy angrily, and he thought to himself, "Thinking of
+money, thinking of money! How mercenary he is!"
+
+"Standard Oil is nowhere," said Snorky feverishly.
+
+"Don't I know it!"
+
+"Oil'll run out but there'll always be mosquitoes and legs!"
+
+"Darn you, Snorky! Shut up and let me sleep!"
+
+But how was he to sleep with the vision that Snorky's avaricious
+imagination held out to him? All night long he tossed about restlessly,
+wandering in a forest of legs; white ones and red ones, black ones and
+yellow ones, tall ones and short ones, fat, thin, bow-legged and
+crooked, all the legs in the world waiting for him to rise up and
+protect them!
+
+The next morning it was worse. All his imagination, suddenly diverted
+from the exact scientific contemplation, was halted before the
+stupendous contemplation of future profits.
+
+"Snorky Green is a bad influence," he said moodily as he trudged out
+heavy-headed from morning chapel. Do what he might, the contamination
+spread. With all the long fatigue of patient investigation he knew was
+ahead, his mind leaped over the present and galloped into the future.
+
+"Multiply twice ninety-two million legs by six pair of socks," he found
+himself repeating. "Oil may run out, but you bet there'll always be
+mosquitoes and legs."
+
+Yes, it was greater than Standard Oil. It was fabulous to conceive of
+the wealth that would be his. All at once the John C. Bedelle Gymnasium
+seemed ludicrously inadequate. He would double the present equipment!
+There would be a second campus--Bedelle Circle! The school lacked water;
+he would create a lake for it and the John C. Bedelle Boathouse. . . .
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Bedelle, kindly shine for us. You may translate, John, but be cautious
+and not too free."
+
+The Roman's mocking voice brought him precipitately to his feet. He
+opened his book but the passage had escaped him and though he dug Shrimp
+Bedient savagely in the back, no signal returned.
+
+"Excellent so far, quite exceptionally excellent; nothing to criticize,"
+said the Roman's rising and falling inflection. "Go on."
+
+"Please, sir, I didn't do the advance."
+
+The class roared and the Roman said:
+
+"Too bad, John, too bad! No luck in guessing this morning. We're in the
+review, John. Too bad! Dreaming again, John? Don't do it, don't do it!
+The country will take care of itself, without you. Times are hard, John.
+Another year in the Second Form is a dreadful drain on Father's
+pocket-book. Sit down, John, and don't dream--don't do it."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Skippy sat down and glared at the Roman.
+
+Some day, some day he would even institute a fund for superannuated
+teachers, he would! He would come back some day to the school he had
+made the greatest in the country; he would come as the BENEFACTOR and
+then the Roman, old, and decrepit in a wheeled chair, would be brought
+to him, to him, John C. Bedelle, whom as a boy he had held up to the
+ridicule of the class! What a revenge that would be, the proud and
+haughty Roman, the greatest flunker of them all, the Roman of the
+caustic tongue and the all-seeing eye, actually clinging to his hand,
+stammering out his thanks . . . the Roman whose mocking voice still
+echoed in his memory, "Don't dream, John, don't do it!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE TENNESSEE SHAD SUSPECTS
+
+
+THE Tennessee Shad, as has been told, was long, thin and full of bones.
+His imagination was chiefly occupied in initiating ideas which would be
+the cause of exertion in others. In the warmth of the budding season he
+came out of his winter cage and could be seen for long hours perched on
+his window sill in the Kennedy, legs pendent; like some dreamy vulture,
+surveying the horizon for a significant point.
+
+There was little that escaped the Shad. For some time his curiosity had
+been stirred by the unusual attentions paid to Skippy Bedelle by his old
+side-partner, Doc Macnooder. Doc was eminently practical and if Doc
+devoted any part of his time to an inconsequential underformer, in the
+language of the day, there was something doing.
+
+The early visits of Macnooder to Skippy's room at the time of the Foot
+Regulator campaign had been noted, likewise the subsequent cooling of
+the affection. So when after a few weeks' lapse Macnooder was again seen
+impelling Skippy in the direction of the Jigger Shop with a protecting
+arm over his shoulders, the Tennessee Shad whistled softly through his
+teeth and said to himself:
+
+"I wonder what new flim-flam game is on?"
+
+Now Macnooder was distinctly a trespasser, for Macnooder belonged to the
+Dickinson and Skippy was of the Kennedy and, by that token, his lawful
+prize. The Tennessee Shad's vigilance redoubled. He began to note the
+air of mystery and solemnity which hung over the two roommates, their
+frequent whisperings and the moments of intense excitement when, with
+locked arms and heads close together, they drew surreptitiously away
+from their fellows for secret conclave. When presently Greaser Tunxton,
+a solitary youngster who ranked high among the polers and high markers
+with a curious penchant for chemistry, began to be seen in their
+company, the Tennessee Shad's vigilance became acute.
+
+One night, when after hours he was returning from a midnight spread in
+King Lentz's room, his ear detected unmistakable signs of activity
+behind Skippy's door across the hall. A quarter of an hour later two
+stocking-clad forms stole past his open door and slowly down the
+treacherous stairs. The Tennessee Shad followed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Below, the door of Greaser Tunxton opened cautiously and as cautiously
+closed again. A moment later the Shad, now at the keyhole, heard the
+window open and the sounds of a foray into the night. He calculated
+nicely, passed into the room and out the window and took up the trail of
+the three shadows moving in the general direction of Memorial Hall.
+
+Ten minutes later the Tennessee Shad, having stalked his prey in classic
+Deerslayer manner, reached the farther stretches of the pond and, flat
+on his stomach among the high grasses, heard the following mysterious
+dialogue:
+
+"How's this, Skippy?"
+
+"Fine! Must be millions of them."
+
+"Do you suppose they sleep?"
+
+"We'll wake 'em up."
+
+"Shucks! It's only bullfrogs," thought the Tennessee Shad; but at this
+moment perceiving the three in clear silhouette against the faint
+moonlight, he instantly discarded that explanation. The three wanderers
+into the night were clothed in helmets, from which voluminous folds of
+cheesecloth descended to the waists, while each had his trousers rolled
+up well above the knees. The conversation continued, to his growing
+mystification.
+
+"They're awake, all right. I can hear them coming!"
+
+"You're the boss, Skippy. What's the order?"
+
+"Twenty paces apart. Greaser, you shake the bell, slowly. Snorky, you
+stand here, and, mind you, no slapping or moving. Everything
+scientific."
+
+"All right, but get a move on. Ouch, I've got two already."
+
+"Red leg or blue leg?"
+
+"Blue, darn it!"
+
+"Fine! I'll count a hundred slowly. Start up, Greaser."
+
+The low, harsh, grating sounds of a rusty bell slowly agitated began to
+be heard, punctuating the droning count: "Five, six, seven!"
+
+"For the love of Willie Keeler, what is it!" said the Shad, more and
+more bewildered, as he rubbed one leg against the other and shook his
+head to protect himself from the many insects. "It must be a secret
+society and this is the initiation."
+
+"Skippy?"
+
+"Hello!"
+
+"The bell's no good at all."
+
+"Twenty-nine, thirty--remember your oath."
+
+"Say! Count a little faster; I can't hold out much longer."
+
+"Red leg or blue?"
+
+"Both, darn it!"
+
+"Any difference?"
+
+The reply was too blasphemous to be set down here.
+
+The Tennessee Shad, too, was paying dearly the price of his curiosity;
+so, being convinced that he had stumbled upon a secret initiation, he
+decided to get some enjoyment out of the situation. Presently,
+trumpeting his mouth with his hands, he emitted a long, wailing sound:
+
+"Ugh, wugh, guggle, guggle!"
+
+"Good lord! What was that?"
+
+"Did you hear it?"
+
+"It's a night owl that's all; fifty-six, fifty-seven--"
+
+"Oonah, woonah, WOO, HOO!"
+
+"Night owls nothing; it's ghosts!"
+
+"There ain't no ghosts, you chicken-livered--"
+
+But at this moment the Tennessee Shad, smarting from head to foot, let
+out an ear-splitting screech and the three experimenters in mosquitology
+disappeared at top speed. The Tennessee Shad, satisfied, emerged,
+examined with curiosity a discarded helmet smeared with
+citronella-soaked cheesecloth, and picked up a rusty dinner bell. This
+last stuck in the crop of his imagination.
+
+"Secret-society stuff," he said to himself as he slapped his way out of
+the marsh. "But why the bell? Darn mysterious, that bell. . . ."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+EXPERIMENTS IN FRAGRANCE
+
+
+THE result of the first investigation in the likes and dislikes of the
+New Jersey mosquito brought a decided difference of opinion. It was
+admitted (given the swollen condition of Greaser Tunxton's legs) that
+the insect's sense of hearing was undoubtedly defective. Snorky Green
+was equally emphatic in expressing his conviction that all colors were
+alike to it, but Skippy insisted that it was not scientific to jump to a
+conclusion on the basis of one experiment.
+
+"But golly! I had forty-seven bites on the red stocking and sixty-five
+on the blue, and if that doesn't prove anything, I'd like to know what!"
+
+"It proves that blue attracts them more than red, that's all. We must
+now try other combinations."
+
+"It proves one thing right here," said Snorky Green, dousing his legs
+with the second bottle of witch hazel. "I'm through on the
+human-experiment game, and that's flat."
+
+"I'm inclined to believe we should concentrate on the sense of smell,"
+said Skippy thoughtfully. "As a matter of fact the experiment turned out
+as I foresaw."
+
+"It did, eh?" said Snorky wrathfully.
+
+Skippy retreated to the other side of the table and hurriedly announced:
+
+"I've been talking it over with Greaser here and the problem is
+narrowing down. Now what we've got to figure out is, shall we make it a
+washing solution or something that'll stick forever?"
+
+"Washing solution."
+
+"Sure we could wash the socks in some sort of preparation of citronella,
+couldn't we?"
+
+"That's too easy. Any one could do that."
+
+"Exactly! That's why we must experiment further. Greaser's got some very
+good ideas."
+
+"Oh! Well, bring on your stinks; I can stand them."
+
+"You can?"
+
+"Sure."
+
+"You swear?"
+
+"I swear. What's the idea, Greaser?"
+
+Greaser Tunxton looked at him hard and thoughtfully before replying.
+
+"You see, citronella comes out in the wash, but there are one or two
+other things much stronger."
+
+"Citronella's pretty strong!" said Snorky, who began to wonder if he had
+promised too rashly.
+
+"Ever heard of asafoetida?" said Skippy, with his hand on the chemical
+genius.
+
+"That's the stuff you put on the furnace at co-ed schools when you want
+a cut," said Snorky, who knew the story of Dink Stover's reasons for
+coming to Lawrenceville.
+
+"It is quite possible," said Greaser in his smileless, scientific
+manner, "that, properly treated, a mixture of silk and cotton, possibly
+wool, will retain enough of the essential quality of asafoetida for at
+least a dozen washings--"
+
+"Isn't citronella bad enough?" said Snorky, with a horrible misgiving.
+
+"It's extremely doubtful," said Greaser, shaking his head, "but I don't
+want to say anything definitely before we make exhaustive experiments."
+
+"Where?" said Snorky, shrinking. "If it's down at the pond again, good
+night!"
+
+"Green!" said Skippy wrathfully.
+
+"Bedelle to you!"
+
+"The experiments can be conducted right here," said Greaser
+reassuringly.
+
+"Oh! Well, why didn't you say so?" said Snorky, feeling a little
+ashamed. "Perhaps after all asa--asa--well, whatever it is, will come
+out in the wash, too."
+
+"If it does," said Greaser proudly, "I've got something worse."
+
+"Worse!" said Snorky, with a sinking heart.
+
+"_Worse!_" said Skippy joyfully.
+
+"If you put that on," said Greaser, meditating, "the socks will be
+better than mosquito-proof--even rattlesnakes wouldn't bite you!"
+
+"Criminy! What is it?"
+
+"I know what it is," said Greaser, wagging his head wisely, "but I can't
+pronounce it!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Events now moved rapidly. The following morning, despite the draft which
+entered through three windows and swept out the door, the Roman stopped
+the morning recitation after five minutes of indignant commotion in the
+class and, making a detailed investigation, dispensed with the presence
+of Mr. Snorky Green, Mr. Skippy Bedelle and Mr. Greaser Tunxton (the
+last with incredulous chagrin) with a request to produce each individual
+bath record for the week.
+
+At eight o'clock that night Snorky Green deserted the communal
+laboratory, bag and baggage, announcing that he was through once and for
+all, and sought asylum of Dennis de Brian de Boru. Finnegan, after the
+first whiff, barricaded the door and seized a baseball bat to repel any
+aggression via the transom.
+
+At eight-thirty, the inhabitants of the second floor held an indignation
+meeting on the steps.
+
+"Holy Moses! What is it?" said the Triumphant Egghead, smelling in the
+direction of the offending room.
+
+"It's a dead cat."
+
+"Smells like ripe sauerkraut and garlic!"
+
+"No, it smells like asafoetida."
+
+"The deuce you say! Asafoetida is a maiden's perfume to this!"
+
+"Well, some one's dead."
+
+"It's the Greaser, then."
+
+"My Lord! This is awful!"
+
+"Skippy's found a pet skunk."
+
+"How in blazes are we going to stand it?"
+
+"We won't."
+
+When the odor had finally rolled down the stairs a house meeting was
+called and the offenders were summoned to appear. Skippy Bedelle and
+Greaser Tunxton responded and the house adjourned through the windows.
+Now it happened that the Roman was dining in Princeton that night and
+the conduct of discipline was in the hands of a young assistant master,
+lately transferred from the wilds of the Dickinson, Mr. Lorenzo
+Blackstone Tapping.
+
+Tabby, as he was more affectionately known, was apt to be somewhat
+confused, as is natural, before an extraordinary crisis, and had made
+one or two lamentable blunders. In the present case, after immediately
+sending in a hurry call for the plumber, he departed in a panic for
+Foundation House, holding before him on a pair of tongs a pair of
+reeking football stockings which he had seized in the wash basin, while
+Skippy Bedelle, under strict orders, remained twenty paces to the rear
+and out of the wind.
+
+Arrived before the dark and awesome, ivy-hidden portals of the Head
+Master's dread abode, Mr. Tapping carefully deposited the unspeakable
+mess against the stone steps, stationed the rebellious Skippy under an
+opposite tree and entered, in a fever of excitement.
+
+"Great heavens!" said the Doctor, starting from his chair. "Are you
+ill?"
+
+"No, sir, it's not myself. That is, it's--it's the whole house; it's
+young Bedelle, sir. The fact is, Doctor, the situation was so serious
+that I--I thought I'd best come to you directly, sir."
+
+"Try to give the details a little more calmly and coherently, Mr.
+Tapping," said the Doctor, retreating behind a handkerchief and studying
+the young assistant with a growing suspicion. He indicated his guest and
+added, "Professor Rootmeyer of Princeton--Mr. Tapping, one of our
+younger masters."
+
+Ten minutes later Skippy, shivering under the apple tree, beheld Tabby
+reappear, take up the tongs gingerly and return to the house. Almost
+immediately the window of the Doctor's study opened with a bang and
+there was an iron clank in the near roadway.
+
+"I never smelled such a smell! Is it possible?" said the Doctor,
+coughing. "What is it?"
+
+"Please, sir, I don't know," said Mr. Tapping miserably.
+
+"You don't know and you are a B. S.?"
+
+"I haven't the faintest idea."
+
+"Well, what is your explanation, or have you any explanation of this
+extraordinary occurrence?"
+
+"I think, sir, the boy is completely unbalanced."
+
+"Bedelle! He's always been steady and well conducted."
+
+"He's been acting queerly lately, sir, and he absolutely refuses to give
+any explanation. The house, sir, is quite untenantable. I--I don't think
+the boys can sleep there to-night."
+
+"Where is Bedelle now?"
+
+"He is outside, sir--waiting."
+
+"Perhaps I had better examine into this myself," said the Doctor,
+frowning. "Bedelle is a good boy--a bit of a dreamer, but a good,
+reliable boy. Mr. Tapping, you may return to the Kennedy and quiet them.
+I shall be over later. Keep Bedelle waiting--outside."
+
+"Jim," said Professor Rootmeyer, the distinguished chemist, "there are
+only two things in God's universe can produce a smell like that--a dead
+Indian and butyl mercaptan."
+
+The Doctor immediately discarded the first hypothesis.
+
+"Frank, you've hit it. It _is_ butyl mercaptan," he said, laughing.
+
+"Well, how did you know?"
+
+"I remember once when I was a shaver--"
+
+"Go on," said Professor Rootmeyer as the Doctor came to a hurried stop.
+
+"H'm, we are living in the present," said the Doctor after a second
+thought.
+
+He rose and went to the doorstep.
+
+"Bedelle!"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+The stench began to swell with the hurried approach.
+
+"Stop there," said the Doctor hastily, and, having had his imagination
+sharpened by frequent contact with the genus boy, he added with sudden
+inspiration: "Go round to my study window. I will speak to you from
+inside."
+
+A moment later Skippy's white face appeared, framed against the night.
+
+"Bedelle, Mr. Hopkins reports that you were dismissed from first recital
+this morning, for being in a condition which unfitted you for
+association with your fellow beings. Is that true?"
+
+"Please, sir, it was the citronella."
+
+"Mr. Tapping reports that the stench arising from your room has made the
+house untenantable. Is that true?"
+
+"Please, sir, that was asafoetida and--"
+
+"And butyl mercaptan; I'm quite aware of that," said the Doctor quickly,
+to continue the tradition of omniscience.
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Well, Bedelle, what is your explanation? Were you trying to poison any
+one?"
+
+"Oh, no, sir!"
+
+"You were not contemplating self-destruction, were you?" said the
+Doctor, whose curiosity led him to adopt a light coaxing manner.
+
+"Please, sir, I was experimenting."
+
+"Experimenting! What for?"
+
+"I'm sorry, sir, I can't tell you," said Skippy defiantly. He had
+foreseen the test, but he was resolved to be drawn and quartered before
+yielding up the secret of his future millions.
+
+"You--can't--tell--ME?" said the Doctor in his pulpit sternness.
+
+"No, sir. I've taken an oath."
+
+"Do you realize, Bedelle, that you owe me an explanation, that if there
+is no explanation for this extraordinary attack on the discipline and
+morale of the school that I should be quite justified in requesting your
+immediate departure?"
+
+"I know, sir. Yes, sir."
+
+"And you refuse still?"
+
+"It's an invention, sir. That's all I can tell you, sir. I'm sorry, sir.
+Please, Doctor, I'd like to stay in the school."
+
+The Doctor considered. He was a just man and his sense of humor allowed
+him to distinguish between the vicious and the playful imagination.
+After long, agonizing moments for Skippy waiting at the window, he took
+a sudden decision.
+
+"Bedelle?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"If I let you remain at Lawrenceville, will you give me a promise--that
+so long as you remain here, you won't attempt to invent anything else?"
+
+"So long as I'm in the school?" said Skippy, broken-hearted.
+
+"Absolutely. It's that or expulsion. I have four hundred tender lives to
+protect. Well?"
+
+"I swear," said Skippy, with tears in his eyes.
+
+The Doctor bit hard and said:
+
+"Then I shall overlook this. Your record is in your favor. I shall
+overlook this. I have your word of honor, Bedelle. Good night."
+
+Skippy drew a long breath and went hurriedly back to the Kennedy. But
+there he halted. The smell was awful and the comments which reached him
+through the open windows were not at all reassuring.
+
+"I think--I think perhaps it's warm enough outside," he said,
+heavy-hearted.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For two more years he had solemnly sworn to refrain from inventing, and
+Skippy was a man of his word. No matter, there was this consolation:
+Mosquito-Proof Socks would some day be a reality; butyl mercaptan had
+proved its worth at the first test. He would devote himself to a
+scientific preparation. He was young. With twice ninety-two million legs
+to be protected with six pairs of socks or stockings a year, he could
+afford to wait.
+
+"Before I'm thirty, I'll be a millionaire," he said defiantly. "I'll own
+race horses and yachts and boxes at the opera and I'll marry--" Here he
+hesitated and the figure of Lillian Russell somehow became confused with
+a new apparition. Something that was and was not Miss Virginia Dabtree,
+but most certainly wore silver stockings, which it would be his duty and
+privilege to protect. "Well, anyhow, she'll drive a four-in-hand and
+wear pearls for breakfast," he concluded, and, whistling, he went down
+to dream out the night in the baseball cage.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+SOAP AND SENTIMENT
+
+
+TEN days after the dreadful fiasco of the Mosquito-Proof Socks, when a
+corps of experts had succeeded in removing the stench from the upper
+floors of the Kennedy; when certain garments had been taken out under a
+vigilantes committee and had been publicly interred; when the three
+offenders had again been permitted to resume their membership in
+civilized society--Snorky Green began to be alarmed at certain
+disquieting symptoms in the conduct of Skippy Bedelle.
+
+"I don't like it," he said, standing before his roommate's washstand in
+a dark reverie. "Danged if I like the looks of things. Somethin' is
+certainly doing. It certainly is."
+
+He picked up a large new nailbrush, showed it to Dennis de Brian de
+Boru, who had been called in consultation, and shook his head.
+
+"Spending his money on bric-a-brac like that--and that's not all!" he
+said indignantly.
+
+"Let me know the worst," said Dennis who, perched on the table tailor
+fashion, had been ruminating, and when Dennis de Brian de Boru remained
+silent, the mental wheels were grinding rapidly. "Fire away, if you want
+to know anything--ask me."
+
+Snorky proceeded to lift the broken cover of the soap dish, and brought
+forth a cake which he tendered gingerly to Dennis for his olfactory
+inspection.
+
+"What a lovely pink stink!" he exclaimed, after one sniff. "Smells like
+the cook on her Sunday off."
+
+"Are you convinced?"
+
+"I am. Skippy, the human scent-box is undoubtedly in love. Object
+matrimony."
+
+"He's got it bad this time," said Snorky, remembering that they had a
+reputation as lady-killers to maintain.
+
+"If you will associate with 'em, it's bound to happen," said Finnegan in
+his rapid fire style. "I know the symptoms. My brother Pat went maudlin,
+when he was just Skippy's age. Ten years of it, presents Christmas and
+birthdays, flowers twice a month, postage stamps and letter paper,
+weekly bulletins and all that sort of rot! Ten years, and then he
+married a girl, best friend stuff, trust you together and all
+that--married her a month after he met her. Think of the expense. Not
+for me, old top--my money goes for race horses."
+
+"You've nothing to worry over, you wild Irishman," said Snorky, who felt
+a certain presumption in this lesson.
+
+"Casting aspersions? Oh, I don't know! I may not be beautiful, but
+women, proud women, have sighed as I passed."
+
+"Run away," said Snorky impatiently.
+
+"I was just going," said Dennis with dignity. At the door he paused for
+a parting shot. "Hard luck, old gormandizer. There won't be so many
+midnight spreads for you, now. Cut down the jiggers, shut up the pantry,
+tighten the belt! Skippy'll need his money for _other_ things. Thank the
+Lord the only thing he can get into of mine, is a necktie. Hard luck!"
+
+Perhaps a little of the practical reactions had occurred to Snorky, for
+he flung a shoe at the diminutive Finnegan and was still in a brown
+study when Skippy came in.
+
+"If he starts to wash he's in love. Bet that's why he's been so
+friendly," he thought, waiting developments. "I thought it was queer he
+didn't sulk more after the big smell!"
+
+In fact Snorky had been considerably puzzled at his roommate's actions
+after the fiasco of the Mosquito-Proof Socks.
+
+"Any mail?" said Skippy nervously.
+
+"I don't think so."
+
+"Are you sure?"
+
+"Come to think about it, there might be a letter over on the table."
+
+The Byronic melancholy vanished from Skippy's face. He sprang to the
+table and seized the envelope.
+
+"Feeling better?" said Snorky, noting the beneficial results.
+
+"Much."
+
+"You look ten years younger."
+
+"You go to blazes!" said Skippy, but without anger. He went to the bed
+and flinging back the mattress uncovered three pairs of trousers slowly
+hardening into that razor edge which is the _sine qua non_ of a man of
+fashion. Apparently satisfied, he next proceeded to the mirror, where,
+after a short inspection, he seized his brushes, dipped them into the
+water pitcher and laboriously began to reconstruct the perfect part that
+was beginning to replace the Skippy cowlick. Trousers may be brought to
+order in a few minutes, but to subdue a cowlick is a matter of years.
+Ten minutes' rigorous application of the brushes failing to produce
+results, he ducked into the washbasin, drove a line with the comb,
+slicked down the sides and applied a press, in the form of a derby,
+which process will subdue the most recalcitrant of cowlicks for at least
+two hours.
+
+"Aha! Object matrimony?" said a squeaky voice.
+
+Skippy looked up wrathfully to perceive the curious eyes of Dennis de
+Brian de Boru gazing from the transom. Both brushes went flying across
+the room, but Dennis knew when his presence was _de trop_. The episode
+shook off the derby and deranged the part. Snorky watched the process of
+reconstruction with a meditative glance.
+
+"Skippy, old horse, you are _so_ spick and span. Has love really come to
+you?"
+
+"You go take a run and jump," said Skippy lightly and he began to
+whistle a genial air.
+
+Now if Bedelle had denied the direct accusation, Snorky would have been
+certain of its truth, vice versa if the answer had been broadly
+affirmative, Snorky would have at once dismissed the suspicion. Skippy's
+light, _de haut en bas_ manner left him unconvinced. Circumstantial
+evidence was all he had to go on, but the evidence was strong. Skippy
+undeniably was a changed man.
+
+"What day is it?" said Skippy, who had been reading over the letter.
+
+"Wednesday, you chump."
+
+"Three days to Saturday," said Skippy with a sigh. He went to the
+washstand, poured out the water and began to scrub diligently at his
+nails.
+
+"Well, you ought to get them clean by that time," said Skippy
+facetiously.
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"So you are in love?" said Snorky, shifting the conversation.
+
+"What makes you think so?"
+
+"Go ahead, open your heart, what's a roommate for?"
+
+"You'd be a nice one to confide in! Why not shout it in a telephone?"
+
+"Hold up, that's a raw deal," said Snorky rising wrathfully. "I may
+have weakened under that awful stink, but I kept the secret, didn't I?
+Didn't I stand up three hours against the whole blooming house and did
+they ever get a word from me about Mosquito-Proof Socks, and in the
+state of temper they were too? Oh, I say, come now, square deal you
+know!"
+
+Skippy considered him more favorably. Besides, he remembered that by
+Saturday he would need to embellish his sartorial display with a few
+treasures from his chum's wardrobe. He sat down and took his head in his
+hands.
+
+"Snorky, old fellow, you're right--I've got it bad."
+
+"And you're going over to Princeton Saturday to meet her?" said Skippy,
+who saw a trail.
+
+"Her, what her?"
+
+"Mimi Lafontaine, of course," said Snorky with a sudden intuition.
+
+"Her name is Tina," said Snorky tragically. "Her first name. Perhaps
+some day I can tell you her real name, not now."
+
+"Rats, it is Mimi, and you're going over again to meet her at the game,"
+said Snorky, who knew the Skippy imagination.
+
+"So you think I'm going to Princeton," said Skippy looking at him
+wisely. "I am--but from there I am making a cut for New York. Get the
+point?"
+
+"Oh, Tina's in New York?"
+
+"She is." He hesitated a moment, and then weighing his words to give
+full value to their dramatic significance, he added--"She is on the
+stage."
+
+"You're a thundering, whooping, common-a-garden liar," said Snorky, who
+felt that his sympathies were being trifled with. "Where in blazes would
+you know an actress anyhow?"
+
+"And you asked my confidence!" said Skippy reproachfully. "Tina and I
+grew up together. She ran away a year ago. It's a terrible story,
+terrible! She's had the devil of a life, poor little girl. Gosh, if I
+were only twenty-one!"
+
+"Skippy, if you are faking it again this time," said Snorky, whose
+confidence was shaken by the perfect seriousness of his chum's
+melancholy. "If you are, dinged if I'll ever believe another word."
+
+"See here--did I volunteer to tell you?" said Skippy, who rose with a
+complete injured air. "That settles it. This is all you'll ever know."
+
+And leaving Snorky in a ferment of curiosity he went to his desk, drew
+out a sheet of paper and began to run his fingers through his hair.
+
+Snorky, as a matter of fact, had hit the nail on the head, though of
+course it would never do to have him suspect it. Skippy did not mind
+confiding to him his state of mind, in fact it was absolutely necessary
+if he were to go on without an internal explosion to seek some sympathy
+and understanding. But to admit to Snorky that he had actually succumbed
+to Mimi the Japanese brunette, particularly when the issue was still
+clothed in doubt,--was unthinkable. So Skippy invented Tina.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+LOVE COMES LIKE THE MEASLES
+
+
+IT had all happened the Saturday before, when for reasons of her own
+Miss Clara Bedelle (the reasons taking shape in the heroic figure of
+Turkey Reiter, captain of the eleven, and the Triumphant Egghead,
+premier danseur of the school) had asked Skippy to invite those heroes,
+as she, being already wise in protective knowledge, preferred not to
+show her affection too directly. Skippy, on receipt of these sisterly
+directions, had been in a towering rage, for it had never occurred to
+him that men of the world such as Turkey and the Egghead would for a
+moment condescend. If it had not been for the added bait of a Princeton
+game, he would never have found the courage. The result upset all his
+preconceived theories, and it was not until he found himself on the high
+road to Princeton, actually squeezed into a buggy between two eager and
+enthusiastic lords of the school that he attempted to reason it out. The
+attempt, however, was beyond him. If girls as such were
+incomprehensible, how the deuce was he, Skippy Bedelle, to conceive that
+such a thing as a sister, particularly his sister, could arouse any
+enthusiasm?
+
+"Guess it's the grub and the game all right," he reflected finally.
+"Anyhow they will let me alone, that's something."
+
+At lunch it did seem that his wish was to be gratified and despite
+certain sisterly glances of reproach, he was able to secure a third
+helping of roast beef and a double portion of ice cream and cake, with
+the connivance of Miss Biggs the chaperone, while Sister and Miss
+Lafontaine attended to the chatter. So engrossed was he in this attempt
+to stock up for the long week ahead, that he completely failed to notice
+the comedy which was being played to the greater edification of Mr.
+Turkey Reiter and the obvious disconcerting of the Triumphant Egghead,
+who was being neglected flagrantly and openly for mysterious reasons
+known only to the ladies.
+
+Skippy, therefore, was totally unprepared, as he was both shocked and
+terrified, suddenly to find himself at the side of Miss Mimi, with
+Turkey and his sister behind, while the Triumphant Egghead, not to give
+his tormentor any further satisfaction, was pretending to laugh
+uproariously at something that his companion, Miss Biggs, had just said.
+For five minutes Skippy was in the most complete funk of his life. His
+body seemed suddenly all hands and pockets and do what he would his feet
+would interfere as they had that awful day eight months before when he
+had descended into the family parlor in the first pair of long
+trousers.
+
+"I think that Princeton is just the sweetest place in the world, don't
+you?" said Miss Lafontaine with the air of a great discovery.
+
+"I'm preparing for Yale," said Skippy hoarsely.
+
+"Oh, I'm so glad," said the young lady immediately, and sinking her
+voice to a confidential whisper, she added, "you know I'm Yale too
+though you mustn't give it away. I think Yale men have such strong
+characters, don't you? You can't help but admire them, can you?"
+
+Skippy had no ideas upon any subject whatsoever at that moment, besides
+he hadn't the slightest idea what she meant. So he took out his
+handkerchief and then put it back suddenly, as he remembered that a nose
+was never blown in polite society. As Miss Lafontaine's sole object in
+appropriating Skippy was the reflex action on the Triumphant Egghead, it
+was absolutely necessary that Skippy should at least give the appearance
+of appreciating the privilege. Miss Mimi, therefore, decided to jump the
+fence of strict conventionality if the expression be permitted.
+
+"Jack," she said, coming closer, "own up now, you are a terrible
+woman-hater, aren't you?"
+
+"Damn all sisters," he muttered to himself. Then he looked up and met at
+the deadliest of ranges, the smiling, mischievous eyes of the Japanese
+brunette. Despite himself, he broke into a laugh.
+
+"Girls do give me a pain," he said abruptly, "but for the love of Mike,
+I mean for heaven's sake, don't tell Sis I said that."
+
+Miss Mimi immediately passed her hand through his arm.
+
+"Won't you try very, very hard, Jack, to make an exception?"
+
+He breathed hard and something warm went up his back like the warm
+ripple of the hot water when his body slowly immersed. If Snorky Green
+could see him now! Mimi hanging on his arm, Mimi's soft voice pleading
+with him, Mimi, just as she had done in the fictitious weeks, throwing
+herself at him, actually throwing herself at him! He tried to remember
+one of the dozen eloquent replies he had once evolved, but nothing came.
+
+"I say, you're not a sister, are you?"
+
+Miss Lafontaine was considerably puzzled by this but pretended that she
+was an only child.
+
+"Well that makes a difference; I thought you couldn't be," said Skippy
+unbending a little, "you act differently."
+
+"Oh I see," said Mimi, who had half expected a display of sentiment,
+"aren't you a funny man. So you don't approve of sisters?"
+
+She had called him a man--perhaps after all his sister had not told the
+age of his trousers. He straightened up and answered, "Oh, I suppose
+they are all right--later on."
+
+"Jack--you _are_ a woman-hater!"
+
+"Oh, I don't know," he said, beginning to be flattered, and he fell to
+wondering how he could call her Mimi, which of course was his right.
+
+"I'll tell you a secret, but perhaps you know it already. Perhaps after
+all you are only making fun of me."
+
+"Oh, I say, Mimi," he said all in a gulp and then blushed to his ears.
+
+The young lady, noticing this, smiled to herself and continued:
+
+"Well, if you are simply pretending, it's a very good way to get a lot
+of attention, but of course you know that."
+
+"I? What? Oh, really you don't think!"
+
+"Well, I don't know. Because of course that is what does make a man
+interesting. It is such a compliment when he does take notice. Now a man
+like Mr. Sidell who jollies every girl he meets--"
+
+"The Egghead is a terrible fusser," said Skippy with new appreciation of
+his own value, "you should have seen him at the Prom."
+
+"Did he have Cora Lantier down, the blonde girl with the big ears!"
+
+"She was blonde but I didn't notice the ears. She was down two weeks
+ago."
+
+"Oh, she was?"
+
+Miss Lafontaine glanced backward and snuggled a little closer. Skippy
+began to be aware of the strangest of symptoms; at one moment he felt a
+rush of blood to the forehead just like the beginnings of bronchitis,
+the next moment his throat was swollen as though it were the mumps, yet
+immediately there came a weakness in his knees that could only be
+influenza. The warm contact of the little hand penetrated through his
+sleeve, the sound of her voice shut out all other sounds in his ears,
+and when he met her eyes his glance turned hastily away and as avidly
+returned.
+
+Mimi Lafontaine at the age of nineteen knew very little of the school
+curriculum, but had a marked aptitude for the liberal intuitive arts.
+
+"Mimi would flirt with a clothes horse, if you flung a pair of trousers
+over it," a dear friend had said of her, and on the present occasion she
+was deriving a good deal of pleasure from the situation. The attitude of
+a young lady of nineteen, about to emerge into society, vis-à-vis with a
+youngster sprouting out of his first long trousers, particularly when he
+happens to be the brother of a best friend, is a fairly obvious one.
+There is no excitement to be derived but a certain amount of exercise. A
+fisherman is necessarily a man who enjoys catching fish, and if trout
+are not rising to the fly, sitting on the edge of the wharf and hauling
+in suckers is still fishing.
+
+At the end of the afternoon Skippy was head over heels in love. If he
+had had the opportunity he would have trusted her with the secret of his
+life's ambition--the Bathtub and the Mosquito-Proof Socks. But Miss Mimi
+was too busy extracting information about the Triumphant Egghead (who
+had countered by steadfastly devoting himself to Miss Biggs) and certain
+sentimental chapters in the past of her best friend in which she had had
+a revisionary interest. These subtleties naturally were beyond the
+experience of Skippy, in fact he was quite unable to reason on anything.
+His heart was swollen to twice its natural size, his pulse was racing,
+and the next moment with the wrench of the farewell, he felt in a numb
+despair, the light go out of the day, and a vast sinking weight rushing
+him down into chill regions of loneliness.
+
+"Say Skippy, old sporting life," said Turkey Reiter, speaking over his
+head to the Egghead, who was in a terrific sulk, "How do you do it?"
+
+"Do what, Turk?"
+
+"Why, my boy, you're the quickest worker I ever saw; I thought the
+Egghead knew his business, but he's a babe, a suckling to you!"
+
+"Mimi Lafontaine is the damnedest little flirt I ever met," said the
+Egghead, with a slash of his whip which sent the buggy careening on two
+wheels.
+
+"Hold on there!" said Turkey, grabbing the reins. "I've got to live
+another week. Well, Skippy, my hat's off to you, old sporting life.
+You've got her feeding out of your hand. . . . And Mimi too, right under
+the Egghead's eye!"
+
+"Oh, come off now, Turkey," said Skippy, to whom this light badinage was
+torture.
+
+"Shucks!" said the Egghead, "you know her game."
+
+"Well you played a pretty slick game yourself, old horse, but how did
+you enjoy Miss Biggs?"
+
+"You go chase yourself," said the Egghead, flinging the remnants of a
+cream puff at the horse, which kept Turkey busy for the next five
+minutes.
+
+Skippy scarcely heard. All he wanted was to have the drive over and to
+be alone with his memories. How bold he had been at the end when he had
+crushed her little hand in his! Had she understood--and just what had
+she meant when she had said,
+
+"And so it's Jack and Mimi now, isn't it?"
+
+That night at precisely 10.45 in his sixteenth year, hanging out of the
+second story window of the Kennedy, with a soul above mosquitoes, Skippy
+Bedelle discovered the moon.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Forty-eight hours later, Skippy suddenly realized that the hot and cold
+symptoms, the loss of appetite, the inability to concentrate his mind on
+either "The Count of Monte Cristo" or "Lorna Doone," the hardness of his
+bed, the length of the day were not due to either German measles or the
+grippe. He was suffering from something that neither Dr. Johnny's pink
+pills, nor his white ones nor the big black ones could alleviate. He was
+in love, genuinely, utterly, hopelessly in love.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+THE URCHIN BEGINS TO BLOOM
+
+
+THE first result of young love was a sudden aversion to the well-known
+but freckled features of Skippy Bedelle. The examination in the
+looking-glass had left him in a condition of abject despair. Only a man,
+full-fledged and resplendent, could hope to hold the affections of the
+dazzling Mimi Lafontaine, and what a tousled, scrubby little urchin he
+was! That night he spent one dollar and twenty cents, out of a slender
+reserve, for toilette accessories, and began the long fight for a part
+in the middle of his reckless, foaming hair.
+
+The next day marked a milestone in the sentimental progression of Mr.
+John C. Bedelle. For the first time in his life, his astonished eyes
+encountered a little blue envelope inscribed to his name in a large,
+dashing, unmistakably feminine hand. Neither mother nor sister, aunt or
+cousin had ever addressed that letter. He picked it up and then set it
+down with a sudden swimming feeling. It was postmarked "Farmington."
+
+"My Lord, if it should be from her," he said.
+
+There was, of course, one sure way to solve the difficulty, but Skippy
+was too overcome by his emotion to imagine it. Instead, he sat down and
+contemplated it with a mystical veneration.
+
+"It can't be. No, no, it can't be from Mimi! Good Lord, no. A girl
+doesn't write to a man first," he said, shaking his head. "It's from
+Sis. It's a joke, and she's got some one else to address it. That's it."
+
+He opened the letter, which read as follows:
+
+          DEAR JACK,
+
+          I'm writing you for Clara, who is, as you know, a
+          dreadfully lazy person. School is over and I shall
+          bring Clara back to Trenton with me day after
+          to-morrow. Are you so bored with my dreadful sex
+          or have you made a little exception? Any way, this
+          is to warn you that you may have to be my cavalier
+          once more if we decide to go again to Princeton.
+
+                                  Faithfully yours,
+                                                        MIMI.
+
+          I saw Cora Lantier in New York. She is going up to
+          the Williams Commencement with a _very dear_
+          friend. Don't tell this to Mr. Sidell.
+
+There are, of course, three ways of contemplating a letter written by a
+young lady, according to whether the recipient be a friend, is in love,
+or being in love, loves without hope. Skippy used all three methods.
+That night he placed four pairs of trousers to press under his mattress,
+discarded the dicky (a labor saving device formed by the junction of two
+cuffs and a collar which snapped into place and fulfilled the
+requirements of table etiquette), and painted the ends of his fingers
+with iodine to break himself of the habit of living on his nails.
+
+On the following Saturday, Mr. Sidell being still, as it were, under
+absent treatment, Mr. Turkey Reiter making the fourth, Skippy
+experienced the terrifying joy of sitting in the back seat next to Miss
+Mimi Lafontaine.
+
+"You bad boy, why didn't you answer my letter?" said that young lady,
+after a careful inspection of the embarrassed Skippy had resulted in
+much increased satisfaction.
+
+"I wrote you three times," he said, staring at his shoes.
+
+"Three--then they must have gone to the school."
+
+"I tore them up," he said, under his voice.
+
+Between a feminine nineteen and a masculine fifteen, much is
+permissible. Miss Mimi, under protection of the rug, slid her little
+hand into his painfully-scrubbed one.
+
+"Poor fellow!" she said softly.
+
+"Gee!"
+
+It was not exactly the last word in romance, but it came from the heart,
+a sort of final gasp as Skippy felt the waters closing above him. With
+her hand in his, something rose in his throat and he had to fight back
+the dimming of his eyes. By the time they rolled into Princeton there
+was no longer need of explanation. He felt that she knew beyond the
+shadow of a mistake, just what he felt for her, he, Skippy, who had
+never loved before. Of course she was not pledged. That he comprehended.
+She was yet to be won. The years between them were nothing. Josephine
+Beauharnais was older than Napoleon. By the time they returned to the
+school, he had opened his heart impulsively and spread before the
+astonished ideal of his affections the treasures of his inventive
+imagination. Miss Lafontaine had been sympathetic. She had understood at
+once. She had rather lightly passed over the Bedelle Improved Bathtub.
+The subject, of course, was a delicate one; but the idea of
+mosquito-proof stockings had captured her imagination. With her faith
+acquired he could wait for years the coming opportunity.
+
+"Why, Jack, I never heard of such an imagination," she said, converting
+an explosive laugh into a sneeze in the nick of time.
+
+"Oh, that's just a beginning," he said confidently. "I've got bigger
+things than that stored away."
+
+"Why, you'll be richer than Rockefeller!"
+
+"That's only a small part of it," he said carelessly. What of course he
+had wished her to know, and he flattered himself that he had done it
+with great delicacy, was that he was a prize worth waiting for.
+
+"You didn't tell Mr. Sidell about Cora, did you?" said Mimi
+irrelevantly, as they arrived at the school and she began anxiously to
+scan the passing groups.
+
+"You bet I didn't, good Lord, no, Mimi."
+
+"I was sure I could trust you," said Miss Lafontaine,--who of course had
+hoped for quite a different issue.
+
+"Gee! this has been one day," he said, half smothered with emotion.
+
+"Has it really?" said the young lady, giving his arm a little squeeze.
+
+"I shall never, never forget."
+
+"Jack, that's what they all say."
+
+Her skepticism pained him. He wanted to do something, something heroic
+to show her the manly quality of his devotion.
+
+"I don't suppose there's any chance of your getting permission to come
+back with us for dinner," said Clara Bedelle to Turkey.
+
+"About as much chance as my passing a Bible exam," said Turkey
+cheerfully.
+
+A great idea smote down on Skippy,--he would accomplish the impossible!
+
+"Swear to keep a secret, Mimi?" he said in a whisper.
+
+"I swear."
+
+"I shall call on you at exactly nine thirty to-night."
+
+"Good gracious, but we're ages away."
+
+"What difference does that make? There is something I've just got to say
+to you."
+
+"But if they catch you!"
+
+"They won't."
+
+"But, Jack, how will you get there?"
+
+"I'll come on the run," said Skippy gorgeously; which proved that if his
+experience was limited he had certain intuitions to build upon.
+
+When Skippy directly after supper bolted to his room and began to scrub
+for the superlative toilette, after collecting a pair of kid gloves from
+Butcher Stevens and a purple tie from Dennis de Brian de Boru, Snorky
+Green was finally convinced that matters had reached a serious pass.
+
+"I thought you were in New York," he said, remembering Skippy's previous
+declaration.
+
+"What? Oh yes!" Skippy, whose mind was not on consistency, hastily
+caught himself. "Oh, Tina! She came down to meet me."
+
+"What in the mischief are you up to now?"
+
+"For the love of Pete don't bother me," said Skippy. "Tell you later.
+Honest, Snorky, it's serious, and I'm in a devil of a hurry."
+
+He struggled into his best pair of low blacks, and suddenly a new
+perplexity arose. What would they look like after five miles tramp
+through the fields and the dust? Yet if he openly pocketed a shoebrush
+and cloth, how explain this to the ever-incredulous Snorky? The window
+was open. He simulated a final polish and profiting by a favorable
+moment tossed the brush and cloth out into the dark. Then he stationed
+himself before the mirror for the final struggle to achieve a part.
+
+"Looks like last year's toothbrush," said Dennis de Brian de Boru, via
+the transom, his usual defensive position.
+
+"Looks like the home rooster when the imported bantam has left," said
+Snorky.
+
+"Looks like a cat that's walked in the mucilage."
+
+"That'll be quite enough," said Skippy, whose patience was evaporating.
+
+"Vaseline'll do the trick," said Dennis softly.
+
+Vaseline! Skippy seized upon the idea in desperation. But to his horror,
+once the part was achieved, the slippery and sticky effect of the
+flattened hair was horrifying.
+
+"Where in Moses is that Irishman!" he cried, slamming open the door.
+
+"Face powder will take the shine off," said Snorky, after an immersion
+of the head in the washbasin had aggravated the catastrophe.
+
+"My Lord, I've got to do something," said Skippy, almost in tears.
+Snorky came to his rescue and between a vigorous rubbing with a bath
+towel and a liberal sprinkling of talcum powder, an effect was finally
+produced which at least was not shiny. Skippy, who had been glancing at
+his watch every three minutes, ended his toilette in a whirl.
+
+"How much money have you got?"
+
+Snorky produced three quarters.
+
+"I'll send it back to you if I don't return."
+
+A light burst over Snorky, confirming his worst suspicions.
+
+"Skippy," he said, seizing his arm, "you're running away! You're going
+on the stage!"
+
+He had not thought of this, but he appropriated the suggestion at once
+by avoiding a denial.
+
+"Snorky, old pal," he said solemnly, "stand by me now. When it's all
+over I'll write you."
+
+"But, good Lord, Skippy--"
+
+"Don't try to stop me. My mind's made up."
+
+"But I say--"
+
+"I've given my _word_," said Skippy tragically. "If I'm not back by
+eight o'clock to-morrow morning, mail this letter to my mother and give
+this to the Doctor. Good-bye. God bless you--and I'll pay you back the
+first money I earn."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+THE HEART OF A BRUNETTE
+
+
+HE recovered the shoebrush from under the window of Tabby, the young
+assistant house-master, and tucking it into his pocket, skirted the
+outer limits of the school, dodged behind a fence, and creeping on
+all-fours, made a wide detour via the pond and rejoined the high road to
+Trenton which lay five dusty miles away. Luckily the evening was
+overclouded and the shadows protecting. His problem was not simply to
+arrive at the Lafontaines' at exactly the hour but to arrive there with
+a cool and dignified appearance. It was hot, and the derby hat pressed
+down on the vaselined hair was hotter than anything about him, hotter
+even than the parched fields and the steaming asphalt which yielded to
+his feet.
+
+"Gosh, I oughter have brought a towel," he said, when at the end of
+twenty minutes he stopped to remove his hat and allow the hot vapors to
+escape. He sat down and fanned himself vigorously. Then he took off his
+necktie and collar and placed them in his pocket, and finally shed his
+coat under favor of the night. He could scarcely distinguish the road
+beneath him, and several times only saved himself from sprawling on his
+nose by a convulsive grasping at a nearby fence. But what did the toil,
+the heat, or the terrors of the night matter? He was going to see her
+again. Not only that but he would come to her surrounded by the romance
+of a great danger run, just to sit in her presence, to hear her voice,
+to see in her eyes some tender recognition of what he had dared for her.
+This was romance indeed!
+
+A dog came savagely out of the night. How was he to know that a fence
+intervened? He ran a quarter of a mile and again sat down. It grew
+hotter; he was dripping from head to foot. A wagon or two went by, but
+he did not dare to ask for a ride, for fear of encountering some agent
+of the Doctor's secret police. For, perhaps, his absence was already
+discovered and the alarm had gone out.
+
+The heat and the discomfort somewhat interfered with the free play of
+his imagination, but the quality of romance still kept with him.
+
+"When I'm twenty-one," he said to himself again and again, in a vague
+defiance of all the hostile powers of Society. Only five years and six
+weeks intervened before the glowing horizon of liberty. Did she care?
+Even that did not matter. She knew what the future held for him. The
+main thing, the thing to cling to, was that her heart was kind. Of that
+there could be no question. How gentle and how understanding she had
+been! He could come to her and tell her anything--absolutely anything!
+
+"Good Lord, what a difference it makes to have some one you can trust,"
+he said solemnly to the night. "Some one to work for!"
+
+At nine o'clock he reached the outskirts of Trenton, and having cooled
+off, put on his collar and necktie. Then he stopped at a stationer's to
+ask his way. A large florid young woman, chewing gum, was behind the
+counter, patting down her oily chestnut curls.
+
+"Say, can you tell me where the Lafontaines live?" he said with an extra
+polite bow.
+
+Fortunately she knew and directed him.
+
+"You're one of them Lawrenceville boys, ain't you?" she said, eyeing
+with curiosity the oozy ruffle of his hair.
+
+Skippy was shocked at this easy discovery of his youth.
+
+"Come off. I'm a member of the Princeton faculty," he said loftily.
+
+"Well, I think you're one of them Lawrenceville boys," she said,
+following him to the door.
+
+He waved back gaily and went skipping up the street. He arrived before
+the Lafontaine mansion with exactly five minutes to spare. The old
+Colonial house was set back in a wide plot and masked by convenient
+foliage. Skippy, passing down the side wall, sheltered himself behind a
+bush, his heart pumping with excitement, and drew on the gloves which he
+had borrowed from Butcher Stevens. Then extracting the shoebrush and
+cloth from his pocket, he busied himself hurriedly with removing from
+his trousers and shoes all traces of the dusty way he had come. This
+done, he hid the brush and cloth under the bush and straightened up.
+Unfortunately either the last preparations or the terrific sentimental
+strain of facing his first call upon a member of the opposite sex had so
+increased his temperature that his forehead was again covered with
+perspiration.
+
+"Great Willies! I can't go in like this--if I only had a
+handkerchief--what am I to do?"
+
+But just at the moment when he had improvised into a towel the most
+available part of his shirt, his heart stood still at hearing above him
+the following conversation:
+
+"Mimi, you're a witch," said the voice of his sister, "I never would
+have believed it."
+
+"Well, my dear, you wanted me to wake him up. I've done it. Goodness, I
+never saw any one go down so quickly. I really believe he's going to
+propose! If you could have seen his funny eyes when he told me that
+there was something he just _had_ to say to me."
+
+"For heaven's sake keep it up. It's better than soap, Mimi. One look at
+his hands and I knew he was in love."
+
+"My dear, what do you think--he's had my photograph for weeks--the one I
+gave you, of course. Now if that isn't a real romance. . . ."
+
+"He ought to be spanked, that boy--stealing away from school!"
+
+"My dear, he's told me all about his life's ambitions."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"It's something about a bathtub--some sort of an invention that's going
+to revolutionize the bathtub industry."
+
+"Then it must be the outside of a bathtub," said Clara with a sisterly
+laugh. "Mimi, I just must hear his proposal."
+
+"You'll laugh and spoil it all."
+
+"On my honor!"
+
+Ten minutes later, Miss Mimi Lafontaine put on her kindliest smile as
+ushered in by the maid Mr. John C. Bedelle came magnificently into the
+room, spick and span, cool as the cucumber is credited to be at any
+temperature; an immaculate purple tie blooming under an unsullied
+collar, with only a slight pollen on the carefully-divided hair. How was
+she to know that, in five minutes, under the sting of betrayed
+confidence and broken illusions, a complete moral transformation had
+made of the urchin a man in the embryo, fired by the burning impulses of
+the deadliest hatred?
+
+He did not stumble or wind himself up in the curtain or upset the bowl
+of goldfish on the slight étagère by the sofa. He came in with a manner
+that was so completely nonchalant that Miss Mimi was manifestly
+impressed.
+
+[Illustration: "Really, Jack, I'm beginning to suspect you're an old
+hand." _Page 140_]
+
+"Why, Jack, you don't look as though you had _run_ at all," she said
+encouragingly.
+
+"Oh, I picked up a buggy and took it easy," he said, seating himself and
+arranging the trouser crease with nicety. Then having perceived under
+the sofa the telltale slippers of Miss Clara Bedelle, he added, "I say,
+how did you ever keep it from Sis?"
+
+"Oh, she thinks it's another caller," said Mimi, staring a little.
+"Really, Jack, I'm beginning to suspect you're an old hand."
+
+"Well, of course this isn't the first time," he said, leaning back and
+sinking his fists in his trousers pockets.
+
+Miss Mimi gave a gasp of astonishment.
+
+"Well, I never, and all you said to me too about the photograph and the
+letters you tore up."
+
+"Did you really believe all that?" said Skippy with a smile that seemed
+to cut across his face. His heart was bursting; yet the task of revenge
+was sweet. "You know Sidell and I are old hunting partners."
+
+Miss Lafontaine sat upright, forgetting everybody in the dismay of her
+discovery.
+
+"Jack Bedelle, do you mean to say that it was all fixed up between you
+two?"
+
+Again Mr. John C. Bedelle smiled.
+
+"Oh, we know a trick or two, even if we're still in school."
+
+Miss Mimi's look was not such as is generally ascribed to the gentler
+sex. She bit her lip and said furiously:
+
+"You just tell Mr. Sidell--" and then, quite suffocated with rage, she
+stopped and flung a little fan, furiously, across the room.
+
+"Now I see her as she is," thought Skippy with a healing delight. Aloud
+he added: "Oh, if you really want to know the truth about Sidell, just
+ask Sis. She probably put him up to the whole game."
+
+Now this was rather crude, and at another time Miss Lafontaine would
+have detected the artifice and consequently divined the whole
+fabrication, but at present she was quite too angry, particularly when
+she realized that her best friend was a witness to her discomfiture.
+
+"Just what do you mean by that?" she said angrily.
+
+"Why, they've been sweet on each other for a couple of years," he said,
+with malice aforethought. "Guess you're not on to Sis. She'd steal
+anything with pants on that came within a mile of her. Ask her sometime
+about the mash notes the plumber's boy used to shoot up to her window,
+or perhaps you'd better not, it gets her too hot. But anyway I advise
+you to keep your eyes open." He rose, for the sudden shifting of the
+slippers back of the sofa warned him it was time to depart.
+
+"Good-bye, Mimi," he said carelessly. "Two can play the same game,
+remember that."
+
+Then, calculating the moment, he bumped into the étagère, upsetting the
+goldfish, and as the dripping figure of Miss Clara Bedelle emerged with
+a scream, Mr. Skippy Bedelle, Chesterfieldian to the last, departed
+saying:
+
+"He laughs best who laughs last."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He arrived at the little stationery shop without having seen where he
+had been going, his eyes blinded with rage, his mind filled with bitter
+imprecations. Of his night's infatuation not a vestige remained except
+the weakness of disillusionment and the suffering of a proud nature.
+
+"Well, Professor, how was your girl?"
+
+He looked up to see the dark-complexioned lady still methodically
+chewing away.
+
+"She's like all the rest," he thought darkly, "fooling some man, I bet."
+
+Then his eyes fell on a group of photographs in the shape of postal
+cards; a wonderful assortment of fleshlings, of young ladies who dazzle
+and display abundant charms before the footlights. He remembered that an
+explanation was due to Snorky, and that the explanation would have to be
+very convincing. One photograph fascinated him; it was so like the way
+Tina would look, if there were a Tina!
+
+The young lady in graceful tights, legs crossed in a figure four, elbow
+resting on a marble column, her chin supported by the index finger, was
+smiling out at him with a full dental smile.
+
+"Say, do a fellow a favor?" he said.
+
+"Sure for a nice boy like you I will," she said, encouragingly.
+
+"Just sign across here--it's a joke."
+
+"Oh, it's a joke?"
+
+"Yes, of course. Sign 'Faithfully yours,'--no--'Fondly yours.'"
+
+"Fondly yours," said the gum chewer, writing with a flourish.
+
+"Tina."
+
+"T--I--N--A."
+
+"Turner."
+
+"Indeed, I'll not!" said the girl with sudden indignation. "Turner's my
+name, and I can't have any such picture--"
+
+"All right, all right, make it 'Tanner' then."
+
+With the photograph as evidence safely bestowed in an inner pocket, he
+set out on the long homeward trudge. The weakness was gone, his
+imagination was now all on the story he would have to tell Snorky.
+Heavens, what had been crowded into one short hour;--love, treachery,
+revenge and triumph! Once a sudden rush of tears caught him, but he
+fought down the mood. The test had been soul-trying, but the victory was
+his. So he marched along, blowing out his courage as he chanted a
+defiant marching song and if Providence had but endowed him with a tail,
+he would have carried it proudly like a banner as he stalked across the
+campus and found his way into the Kennedy.
+
+"Who is it?" said a startled voice.
+
+"Hush, it's Skippy."
+
+"Thank God."
+
+Snorky jumped up and caught him in his arms with such genuine emotion
+that Skippy was profoundly touched, so touched that he almost made a
+clean breast of this affair--almost but not quite.
+
+"What happened? You look all shot to pieces," said Snorky, holding up a
+candle and gazing at him in awe.
+
+"It's all over," said Skippy stonily.
+
+"Over."
+
+"She'd have had to give up her career and--and I'm too young yet to
+support her."
+
+"Honest, Skippy?" said Snorky, with a lingering doubt.
+
+"Here's all that's left to me now," said Skippy, and he brought forth
+the photograph.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+WORLDLY WISDOM OF SKIPPY BEDELLE
+
+
+WHEN Skippy Bedelle (rage and disillusionment in his heart) had tramped
+five weary miles back from the city which sheltered that angel of
+perfidy, Miss Mimi Lafontaine, he said to himself on waking the next
+morning:
+
+"Well, by the Great Horned Spoon, that's one thing I won't bite at
+again." And examining himself in the glass with a new respect--for after
+all he had handled the situation with magnificent impertinence and if
+the story was to be retailed in the home circles it would never be
+introduced by Miss Clara Bedelle--examining himself, then, with a
+certain pride and satisfaction he said vaingloriously, "Hurray, I'm
+vaccinated!"
+
+"How d'ye mean vaccinated?" said Snorky whose head emerged via the
+morning jersey.
+
+"Did I say vaccinated?" said Skippy surprised and cautious.
+
+"You certainly did," said his chum, who observing the rapidity of his
+contact with the washbasin, the reappearance of the dicky and the two
+strokes of the brush which completed his toilette, added with a sigh of
+relief, "I say, old horse, you look more natural."
+
+Skippy immediately returned to the convenient Tina Tanner. He picked up
+the statuesquely posed photograph, contemplated it and returned it to
+its place with the air of a man on whom a great passion has burned
+itself out.
+
+"She was an awfully decent little sort," he said meditatively, "but it
+would have been an awful mess if I'd done it."
+
+"Done what?"
+
+"Followed her on the stage."
+
+"Say, whatever made you think you'd succeed on the stage, you chump?"
+said Snorky, who always retained a lingering doubt when Skippy grew
+confidential.
+
+"Oh, I don't know."
+
+"Well, the way you got off 'Horatius at the Bridge'--"
+
+Skippy stretched his arms and yawned deliciously.
+
+"Gee, but a fellow can make an awful fool of himself," he said, thinking
+now not of the fictitious Tina but of the explanations which must have
+taken place between his sister and Miss Lafontaine.
+
+"A nice wreck you'd have made of your life, you big boob," said Snorky
+taking up the photograph and smelling it curiously to see what perfume
+an actress employed. "So her name's Tanner, eh?"
+
+"Her stage name."
+
+"You couldn't have married a woman like that."
+
+"Not a word against her."
+
+"Well, anyhow are you vaccinated?"
+
+"Bitten, vaccinated and cured!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Now when Skippy spoke thus from his heart it was in absolute faith,
+without the slightest suspicion of the natural course which a habit
+inevitably must take. A habit is after all but an acquired appetite, and
+what appetite was ever begun with instant enjoyment! No inveterate
+smoker ever appreciated his first cigar and the most persistent of
+tipplers choked once over the first distasteful introduction to the
+demon rum.
+
+So be it recorded in this history of the sentimental progress of Skippy
+Bedelle. The impulse which sends the boy back to a second trial of the
+cigar that stretched him pale and nauseated on the ground, or leads him
+to a new attempt at the alcoholic mixture which scorched his throat,
+alone may explain how it came to pass that Skippy, after the first
+disillusioning contact with the opposite sex in the person of Miss Mimi
+Lafontaine, should in the first week of his summer vacation have fallen
+under the despotism of Miss Dolly Travers.
+
+There were, as will be seen, extenuating circumstances and perhaps
+likewise much may be explained by the instinctive belief which is
+implanted in mankind, that woman is twofold, and that the brunettes of
+the species are less deadly than the blondes, or vice versa, according
+to the first contact.
+
+When Skippy Bedelle arrived for the long summer vacation at the family
+home at Gates Harbor, he arrived with a fixed program which is here
+detailed in the order of its importance.
+
+1. To grow at least two inches and to acquire an added ten pounds in
+weight.
+
+2. To achieve this necessary progression towards his athletic ambitions,
+to sleep at least fourteen hours of the day and to eat steadily and
+consistently during the remaining ten.
+
+3. To impress the governor with the necessity of increasing his
+allowance.
+
+4. To conceal from his mother the devastation of that portion of his
+wardrobe which is not a matter of public display.
+
+5. To reduce sisters No. 1 and No. 2 to an attitude of proper respect,
+consistent with the approaching dignity of his sixteen years.
+
+6. To thrash Puffy Ellis for the third consecutive summer.
+
+7. To obtain permission for a two weeks' visit to the home of his chum,
+Snorky Green.
+
+In all of which, be it observed that the feminine portion of society
+occupied not the slightest place.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On a radiant afternoon in mid-June, Skippy, having finished the last bar
+of peanut brittle and made sure that no vestige remained of the box of
+assorted chocolates which had preceded it down the Great Hungry Way,
+assembled three comic weeklies and four magazines, gave the porter a
+quarter for his ostentatious devotions and descended at the station,
+with exactly seven cents in his pocket, having calculated his budget to
+a nicety.
+
+His patent leathers were in a decidedly shabby condition and cracked
+over the instep, but his brown and green check suit, the yellow tie and
+the new panama with the purple and white band were irreproachably _bon
+ton_. He stood a moment supporting himself on a light bamboo cane,
+contemplating his dress suit-case, which he acknowledged was not up to
+form. Not only had the straps rotted away, but there were strange
+depressions and bulges in it due to the Waladoo Bird's two hundred and
+twenty pounds having fallen upon it. Furthermore, it was stained with
+the marks of a root beer orgy and Snorky Green's mistaken efforts to
+remove the same stains with a pumice stone.
+
+Skippy after a moment's deliberation, decided not to insult the hackman
+with an offer of seven cents and having consigned the unspeakable bag to
+the truckman proceeded on foot twirling his cane and trying to appear
+unaware of the admiration of the villagers who were particularly
+impressed by his perfect pants.
+
+The Bedelle homestead was a large ornamental, turreted and bastioned
+mansion, consonant with Mr. Bedelle's increasing prosperity and Mrs.
+Bedelle's social importance.
+
+"Gee, the Governor certainly ought to stand for a raise," said Skippy to
+himself, with a proper appreciation of the velvety lawns, the flower
+gardens and the green and white stables. Then he remembered the none too
+brilliant record of the scholastic year which was sure to come up for
+discussion and fell into a sudden despondency.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+GIRLS AS AN EPIDEMIC
+
+
+AS he turned up the walk, sister No. 2, aged fourteen and a half, came
+romping off the porch and the following conversation took place.
+
+"Hello, Jack."
+
+"Hello, Tootsie."
+
+"You idiotic boy, why didn't you telegraph?"
+
+"What's the use? I'm here," said Skippy to whom a quarter of a dollar
+was an object of reverence.
+
+"Aren't you going to kiss me?"
+
+Skippy glanced around.
+
+"Oh, I suppose so."
+
+"Good gracious, he's got a cane!"
+
+"Say, who let you put your hair up anyhow!"
+
+"I'm fifteen."
+
+"Come off."
+
+"I say, Jack, awful glad to see you, honest, and let's stop fighting
+this summer. You help me and I'll help you."
+
+Skippy looked at her suspiciously.
+
+"Getting on society airs," he thought, but out loud he announced: "All
+right, Tootsie, but see you don't begin. And if you want to help out,
+tell the Governor to make my birthday present in cash. I'm awfully
+strapped."
+
+"Now for old Clara," he said to himself and remembering the last
+encounter when he had upset the gold fish over her, he braced himself
+for the shock. But to his profound amazement Miss Bedelle was honey
+itself.
+
+"Good gracious, Jack, how big you've grown," she said after he had
+submitted to the second sisterly embrace, "and such style, too! What a
+fascinating tie! Dad and mother are out but Sam's just home. Come on up
+and see how nicely I've arranged your room. How are you anyhow?"
+
+"Hard up," said Skippy instantly.
+
+"Would this help any?" said Miss Clara extracting a ten dollar bill from
+a well-filled purse.
+
+Skippy gulped in astonishment.
+
+"What's the matter?"
+
+"How do you mean?"
+
+"Gee, sis, are you going to be married?"
+
+"The idea, you funny boy!" said his sister, blushing violently. "Run on
+now and see Sam."
+
+"What's the matter with everyone anyhow?" said Skippy to himself.
+"There's a reason. There certainly is a dark reason."
+
+Still pondering over the motives for this unaccountable reception he
+proceeded along the hall, to the room of his heart's idol, his brother
+Sam, senior at Yale and star of the nine, Sambones Bedelle, known at
+school as Skippy the first, about whose athletic prowesses the tradition
+still remained.
+
+"Who's that?" said the great man at the sound of his knock. "Skippy?
+Come in and let's look you over."
+
+"Hello, Sambo," said the young idol-worshipper, sidling in.
+
+The older brother caught his hand, slapped him on the back and held him
+off for inspection.
+
+"By Jove, you young rascal, you're sprouting up fast. Whew, what a suit!
+Pretty strong, bub--pretty strong."
+
+"I say, do you think--"
+
+"Never mind. I've worn worse. Paid for?"
+
+"No-o--not yet."
+
+"Anything left of the allowance?"
+
+"Sure."
+
+"Not possible!"
+
+"Seven cents."
+
+"Could you use a five spot?"
+
+"Gee, Sam!"
+
+"All right, all right. Pick it out over there on the bureau. How's your
+conduct?"
+
+"Pretty good."
+
+Skippy, perched on the window-seat, watched with an approving eye the
+splendors that a college education had bestowed. Sam's hair parted
+without a rebellious ripple and lay down in perfect discipline. There
+never were such immaculate white flannel trousers, such faultless
+buckskin shoes and tie, while the socks and the touch of handkerchief
+which bloomed from the breastpocket were a perfect electric blue.
+
+"Well, Skippy, I'll have to look you over," said Sam carelessly. "Time
+you had a few pointers. What did you do at school?"
+
+"Substitute on the eleven and left field on the house nine," said
+Skippy, who understood at once the meaning of such an inquiry.
+
+"First rate. Haven't started on the demon cigarette yet?"
+
+Skippy hesitated.
+
+"Let's see your fingers," said the mentor, who perceiving no telltales
+traces of nicotine grunted a qualified approval. "Well, how much?"
+
+"Oh, just a few whiffs now and then up the ventilator. You know how it
+is, Sambo!"
+
+"Cut it out this summer. Your business is to grow. Savvy? If ever I
+catch you, you young whipper-snapper--"
+
+"All right, Sam."
+
+Skippy the first held him a moment with a stern and disciplinary eye and
+then relaxing, said as he contemplated the hang of his trousers before
+the mirror, "I hear you've started in to be a fusser."
+
+"Who told you that?" said Skippy with the rising inflection.
+
+"I ran in on Turkey Reiter."
+
+"Oh," said Skippy relaxing. "With Miss Lafontaine? That was all a put-up
+game!"
+
+Sam considered him and noting the fatuous smile shook his head and said:
+
+"Well, bub, you're at the age when they fall fast and easy. Now listen
+to a few pearls of wisdom. Got your ears open?"
+
+"Fire away, Sambo!"
+
+"If you've _got_ to fall and you will--sure you will, don't shake your
+head--if you've got to fall, don't trail around on an old woman's skirts
+and get treated like a dog--fetch and carry stuff. Look the field over
+and pick out something young and grateful. Something easy. Something
+that'll look up to you. Let her love you. Be a hero. Savvy?"
+
+"Huh! Girls give me a swift pain," said Skippy with a curl of his upper
+lip.
+
+"Wait and count the pains," said Sam with a grin. "You're at a bad age.
+Well, I have spoken. What's the use of having an older brother if he
+can't do you some good?"
+
+It being only four o'clock, Skippy decided to look up the Gutter Pup,
+who with the Egghead, represented the school contingent at Gates Harbor.
+Lazelle, more familiarly known as the Gutter Pup, Gazelle, Razzle-dazzle
+and the White Mountain Canary according to the fighting weight of the
+addressee, lived just across lots.
+
+With three months' respite ahead from the tyranny of the chapel bell,
+three months of home cooking, fifteen dollars in his pocket and nothing
+to do but to romp like a colt over pastures of his own choosing, Skippy
+went hilariously over the lawns, hurdled a hedge and hallooed from below
+the well-known window.
+
+"Hi there, old Razzle-Dazzle, stick your head out!"
+
+A second and a third peremptory summons bringing no response, he went
+cautiously around the porch.
+
+"Why it's Jack Bedelle," said the Gutter Pup's sister from a hammock.
+"Gracious, I never should have known you!"
+
+"Hello yourself," said Skippy, acknowledging with a start the difference
+a year had brought to the tomboy he had known. "Say, you've done some
+growing up yourself."
+
+He ended in a long drawn out whistle which Miss Lazelle smilingly
+accepted as a tribute.
+
+"I say, Bess, where's the old Gazelle?"
+
+"Charlie? Why he's gone out canoeing with Kitty Rogers."
+
+"What!"
+
+Miss Lazelle repeated the information. Skippy was too astounded to
+remember his manners. He clapped his hat on his head, sunk his fists in
+his pockets and went out the gate. The Gutter Pup spending his time like
+that! He made his way to the club where more shocks awaited him. On the
+porch was the Egghead feeding ice cream to Mimi Lafontaine. On the
+tennis courts Puffy Ellis and Tacks Brooker were playing mixed doubles!
+Skippy could not believe his eyes. What sort of an epidemic was this
+anyhow? He went inside and immediately a victrola started up a two-step
+and lo and behold, there before him whirling ecstatically about the
+floor, held in feminine embraces, were Happy Mather and Joe Crocker, the
+irreconcilables of the old gang!
+
+"Hello, Skippy, shake a foot," said Happy Mather encouragingly. "Want to
+be introduced?"
+
+"Excuse me," said Skippy loftily. "What's happened to the crowd? Can't
+you think of anything better than wasting your time like this?"
+
+"Wake up!" said Happy, making a dive for a partner. "You're walking in
+your sleep."
+
+Skippy went sadly out and down to the bridge where he perched on a pile
+and contemplated the swirling currents with melancholy. What had
+happened? After an hour of bitter rumination he rose heavily and
+engrossed in his own thoughts passed two ice-cream parlors, utterly
+forgetful of the sudden wealth in his pockets. On the way home he
+perceived something white and pink moving lightly in airy freedom, while
+at her side laden to the shoulder with sweaters, rugs, a camp stool and
+a beach umbrella was Sam. He came rebelliously to the home porch and
+then hastily ducked around to the side entrance, for the porch was in
+full possession of Clara who was entertaining a group of men. He sought
+to gain his room noiselessly via the back parlor and came full upon
+Tootsie who was showing a book of photographs to a pudgy, red-haired
+boy, who blushed violently at his intrusion and stood up, until he had
+acknowledged the embarrassed introduction and escaped.
+
+"What in thunder's gotten into everybody anyhow?" he said to himself
+disconsolately. "Girls, girls everywhere. The place is full of them and
+everybody twosing, twosing! What in Sam Hill is a regular fellow to do!
+Gee, but it's going to be a rotten summer!"
+
+So in this melancholy seclusion, gazing out of his window, at the green
+landscape vexed by the omnipresent flash of white skirts, uneasily
+conscious that a crisis had arrived in his social progress that would
+have to be met, Skippy began to commune with himself and likewise to
+ruminate. His first contact with female perfidy had destroyed half his
+faith in woman; never again could he trust a brunette. Some day he might
+permit himself to be appreciated by a blonde, but it would take a lot of
+convincing. But it is one thing to have fixed principles and another to
+resist the contagions of a whole society. Virtue is one thing but
+loneliness is another.
+
+"What the deuce is a regular fellow going to do?" he said. But already
+his resentment had given way to a brooding anxiety. All at once, he
+remembered that he too had loved. Something that had been dormant awoke,
+as the touch of spring awoke the great outdoors.
+
+          "For I must love some one,
+           And it may as well be you."
+
+The refrain haunted him. Had the time come when even he would have to
+descend?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+THE BLONDE OF THE SPECIES
+
+
+SUNDAY was a nerve-racking problem in days when the New England
+tradition still held. There was no fishing, no tennis, no baseball, and
+no golf. Picnics were taboo. There was of course a large amount of
+eating to be done, but after fish-balls, griddle cakes, and pork and
+beans for breakfast, a heavy sermon, and a heavier roast beef for
+dinner, the long afternoon had to be lived through in a sort of
+penitential expiation. One dozen fed-to-bursting, painfully primped
+young human colts, ranging from fifteen to seventeen years of age,
+gathered in the Gutter Pup's barn and mournfully debated the eternal
+question of what to do.
+
+"It's too cold to sneak up to the old swimming hole," said Tacks
+disconsolately.
+
+"Why not have a few rounds with the mitts?" said the Gutter Pup eagerly.
+
+"In these duds?" said Happy Mather, who preferred to stand because when
+he sat down the Sunday collar pinched his throat. "Nothing doing! Thank
+you, but my governer's hand is still strong!"
+
+"We might organize a Browning Society," said Puffy Ellis, who came from
+Boston.
+
+"Bright boy!"
+
+"Oh, well, since we 're all dressed up and nowhere to go, we might as
+well do the society racket and call on the sweet things."
+
+"Girls!" said Skippy, sarcastically. "My aunt's cat's pants! Joe, what's
+got into you! You used to be human last summer. Girls! Girls! I vote we
+all go out and pick a bunch of dandelions for Joe Crocker to carry
+round."
+
+"Hold up," said the Gutter Pup. "You give me an idea."
+
+"If it's got anything to do with skirts," said Skippy, "au revoir and
+likewise good-by. I resign."
+
+"Shut up! When Razzle-dazzle starts to think, give him a chance," said
+Happy Mather. "Who asked your opinion? You're nothing but a tadpole,
+anyhow."
+
+"Well, what's the idea?" said Tacks.
+
+"It's a good one," said the Gutter Pup slowly. "It's a gag we used to
+pull off in the old Murray Hill Gang, the winter I put Spider Martin
+away in seven rounds. Spider was no great shakes with the mitts but he
+had some bright ideas. This is one of them. How many are we?"
+
+"Twelve."
+
+"Just right. Only it's got to be played dead serious, no horseplay,
+kiddin', or rough stuff."
+
+Just half an hour later Miss Connie Brown, aged sixteen, who was yawning
+over a novel on the chaise-lounge of her bedroom, was electrified into
+action by the announcement that two gentlemen callers were waiting for
+her in the parlor. Miss Connie was in excellent health, weighing one
+hundred and sixty pounds, rather freckled, and quite accustomed to watch
+her girl friends enjoying themselves in the ballroom. She bounded down
+the stairs and arrived, slightly out of breath, to find the Gutter Pup
+and Skippy stiffly erect.
+
+"Allow me to present my friend, Mr. Bedelle!" said the Gutter Pup in the
+correct tones of an undertaker.
+
+Miss Connie shook hands vigorously and said, beaming with surprised
+delight:
+
+"I think it's just too darling of you to drop in. Every one's out and I
+was trying to read a poky old book. We'll have tea and there's some
+chocolate cake left. Course I know your sister, Mr. Bedelle. I think
+she's just the dandiest girl."
+
+"I hope your father and mother are well," said Skippy gravely.
+
+"What? Oh, yes! They're all right. Let's be cozy and camp down over
+here."
+
+"And your sister?" said the Gutter Pup with equal punctiliousness.
+
+"Sis? Oh, she's fine and dandy," said Miss Connie, curling up on the
+sofa, after lighting the lamp under the tea kettle.
+
+Skippy and the Gutter Pup after this irreproachable beginning, sat up
+stiffly and, retiring into a set silence, stared very hard at their
+hostess.
+
+"You'll have a bit of chocolate cake, won't you?" said the young lady,
+wondering how to open the conversation.
+
+"Thank you."
+
+"And you, Mr. Bedelle?"
+
+"Thank you."
+
+At this moment the bell rang and the maid announced:
+
+"Mr. Mather and Mr. Crocker callin' on you, Miss Connie."
+
+Miss Brown could not believe her ears. Such a thing had never happened
+before, even in her happiest dreams. If her sister could only see her
+now! She gave a hurried calculating glance at the chocolate cake and
+went joyfully more than halfway to meet the new arrivals. The four
+conspirators, after formal greetings, ranged themselves in a semicircle,
+stiffly balanced on the edges of their chairs, hands on their knees, and
+waited for their hostess to play with the conversation.
+
+"Did you see Maude Adams in her new piece this spring?" said Miss
+Connie, who began to fidget with the cups and carefully cut the cake
+into five exact divisions.
+
+As this question was addressed to the company in general, the four
+visitors maintained a frozen attention.
+
+"I'm just crazy about Maude Adams. I went three times," said Miss
+Connie, who found that five teacups choked up the table in the most
+disconcerting way. "You like Maude Adams, don't you--er--Mr. Mather?"
+
+"I like Maude Adams."
+
+"And you, Mr. Brooker?"
+
+"I like Maude Adams."
+
+Miss Connie was staring at the teapot desperately, seeking for some new
+topic of conversation, when again the bell rang and two more callers
+were announced. Miss Connie's Cinderella-like enthusiasm gave way to a
+feeling of panic. She whispered hoarsely to the maid to bring two more
+cups and surreptitiously made a new allotment of the chocolate cake. The
+new arrivals inquired solemnly after the health of Miss Connie's mother,
+father and sister, and then joined the expectant silence. When the young
+lady in turn had discovered that the new callers liked Maude Adams, all
+mental processes came to an end and the sound of the clock from the
+mantel fell like the blows of a hammer in the room.
+
+When the fourth relay arrived, her complexion took on a bright red tinge
+and her agitation was such that she poured the cream into the cake and
+broke two cups.
+
+"Did you see her!" said the Gutter Pup ecstatically, after they had
+allowed the pent-up hilarity to die out behind the sheltering hedge.
+"Skippy, old top, when that last bunch arrived, I thought she certainly
+was going down for the count."
+
+"Her eyes were jumping and she was breathing like a horse."
+
+"Well, how do you like the idea?"
+
+"Best Sunday afternoon I ever spent."
+
+"Where away now?"
+
+"I'd like to work it on Tootsie."
+
+"Hold up--my sister needs it more than yours."
+
+The point was debated and as no decision could be reached it was decided
+to keep to the regular program. The afternoon was a huge success from
+the point of view of the male phalanx. The destruction was enormous. One
+or two young ladies held out until the fifth relay but almost collapsed
+at the fourth.
+
+"'Course they'll all get together to-morrow and have it in for us," said
+the Gutter Pup, chortling. "But never mind, it was worth it. Did you
+ever see anything as idiotically solemn as Tacks Brooker? When he
+arrives they certainly throw up the sponge."
+
+"Have we time for another?"
+
+"Sure, it's only a quarter of six. We'll put this one over hard, for she
+certainly needs taking down."
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Dolly Travers. Don't know her? You will."
+
+Miss Dolly Travers received them with the manner of a Dresden
+shepherdess just stepping from the mantelpiece and Skippy took the
+petite hand gingerly, as though afraid that anything so delicate and
+brittle would break at the touch. The voice of his brother's worldly
+wisdom seemed to sound in his ears:
+
+"Pick out something young and grateful. Be a hero."
+
+Miss Travers was undeniably young, if artful, and moreover she was not
+of the dark and deceptive class of brunettes, but a blonde, with eyes as
+open and guileless as the blue of the June day. She had solved the
+problem of the classification which as naturally marks the feminine
+progress as long trousers indicates the man, by bobbing her hair; and,
+though the subterfuge seemed to afford much amusement to certain of her
+sex, it immediately separated her from the pigtails.
+
+There was something about her that appealed instantly to Skippy and
+inspired confidence, something cool and dainty and at ease. She did not
+express either surprise or excessive delight at their entrance. There
+was something simple and frank about everything she did. He appreciated
+it and fell to wishing that Tootsie would be more like her, less
+coquettish and more of a good comrade.
+
+"Well, what do you know?" said Dolly, looking at the Gutter Pup.
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"I hope your mother and father are well," said Skippy, true to the
+formula.
+
+"Gracious! Are you trying to make conversation?" said Dolly, beginning
+to laugh, "Don't sit on the edge of your chairs, boys, like monkeys on a
+stick; sit back and be comfortable."
+
+Happy Mather and Tacks appeared with gloomy ceremony.
+
+"Is this the first time you ever paid a call?" said the young lady when
+Happy had opened the question of the family health. "What is the matter
+with you boys? You look too ridiculous for words; sit back, stick your
+hands in your pockets, and look natural."
+
+Again the bell rang and the sounds of the third relay were heard in the
+hall. Miss Dolly glanced quickly at the four solemnities and then
+suspiciously out of the window where relays four and five were lurking
+under the trees, suppressed a smile, and came to a sudden decision.
+
+"My mother and father are in perfect health, my sister is in perfect
+health, how are yours?" she said, as Puffy Ellis started to clear his
+throat. "No, no, don't sit down. You're much too imposing. Mr. Crocker,
+you take one side of the fireplace and Mr. Ellis the other, and please
+don't look so gawky. You aren't really afraid of one little girl, are
+you? And by the way, Charlie Lazelle, go out on the porch and call in
+the others."
+
+"Others?" said the Gutter Pup, trying to save the day by his
+cat-and-cream expression.
+
+"The others who are hiding under the willow," said Dolly lightly. "Hurry
+up, because it's six o'clock and Daddy will be back any moment. He's
+such a bear about the boys I go with. It's a marvelous chance for him to
+look you over. Joe Crocker, sit down at the piano."
+
+"On Sunday?" said Joe, startled out of his attitude.
+
+"Don't worry, we're not going to dance. We're going to make a good
+impression on father."
+
+When Mr. Travers drew up ten minutes later he beheld eleven sheepish
+young gentlemen huddled in a circle in the middle of the parlor intoning
+from hymnbooks the measures which Joe Crocker pounded out from the piano
+under the solemn inspection of Miss Dolly Travers.
+
+"Great heavens! What's this?" said Mr. Travers, who was the most
+unorthodox of men. "What in mischief are you up to now?"
+
+"It's my Sunday School class," said the young lady, with difficult
+seriousness. "We're meeting every week. It won't annoy you too much,
+will it, father?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+RESULT OF A BROTHER'S ADVICE
+
+
+THE first dance of the summer took place the following Saturday, and the
+entire feminine contingent immediately declared war on Miss Dolly
+Travers, who entered escorted by four cavaliers and subdivided each
+dance.
+
+While others more fortunately endowed with rhythmic feet swayed and
+circled about the ballroom with the little Dresden china blonde, Skippy,
+who guarded in his arms a pink and white filmy scarf, glowered across
+the vacant chair at Puffy Ellis, who had been favored with the
+safekeeping of the favorite's fan.
+
+"Jack, you're perfectly ridiculous," said Sister Clara, who did not
+relish the competition. "The idea of making a fool of yourself over a
+child of twelve that ought to be in bed long ago. Haven't you any
+pride?"
+
+"Kitty, kitty," said Skippy softly. He could not be bothered with such
+things as sisters. His mind was made up. He glared over at Puffy and
+said to himself: "To-night I'll give him his choice. Either he gets off
+the horizon, or I tear the hide off him."
+
+He would protect his rights in the good old-fashioned way, even if he
+had to thrash a dozen of them!
+
+"Why, Jack!" said Dolly, whirling up at this moment, and sinking back
+into the scarf which he hurriedly draped about her. "You look like blood
+and thunder. You're not jealous, are you?"
+
+"Oh, no!"
+
+"Well then?"
+
+"Why did you give Puffy Ellis that fan?"
+
+"Poor Puffy! He doesn't dance, either."
+
+"Lord, I'll dance by next Saturday," said Skippy miserably, "or break a
+leg."
+
+"Foolish boy, of course you must dance! If I sit this out with you, will
+it make you feel any better?"
+
+"Will it!"
+
+"We'll go on the porch and you'll try a one-step. Oh, no one will see.
+Gracious! Don't look so terrified."
+
+Skippy's answer was something between a gulp and a gurgle.
+
+"Don't you want _me_ to teach you?" said Dolly in the velvetiest voice
+in the world.
+
+"I'll try; I'll try anything you say," he said, breathing hard, "only I
+say, Dolly, remember a cart-horse has done more dancing than I ever
+have."
+
+"The two-step is frightfully easy--you'll see," said the young lady when
+they had reached the dark end of the piazza. "It's just one-two to
+music. Put your arm around me!"
+
+"What?"
+
+"You goose! How can you dance if you don't?" said Dolly in a cool
+professional manner. "Take my hand. So! Now just walk in rhythm."
+
+When Skippy for the first time in his life had actually closed his arm
+around a feminine waist and clutched at the outstretched hand, he had a
+sensation of terrifying dizziness, such as had once overcome him when on
+a dare he had poised himself thirty feet in the air for his first high
+dive.
+
+"Begin! One, two, left foot, to the music!"
+
+Skippy blindly and obediently began to walk. He walked all over the
+little feet. He walked on his own. He walked into a chair and ricocheted
+from a table with a bump that bounced them off the railing.
+
+"That's enough!" said Dolly in a slightly discouraged voice. "Gracious!
+You mustn't grab me like that. You're not drowning."
+
+"Drowning's nothing to this," said Skippy, rubbing his forehead. "You
+see it's hopeless."
+
+"Of course it isn't hopeless. If that great big lummox of a Tacks
+Brooker can dance aren't you ashamed of yourself to give up like that?"
+
+"I'll never dance another step," said Skippy sulkily.
+
+"The idea, Jack Bedelle! I want you to dance, and dance you shall!" said
+Dolly, stamping her foot. "Do you understand?"
+
+[Illustration: He balanced carefully, stretched out one arm to encircle
+an imaginary waist. _Page 172_]
+
+"Don't rub it in, Dolly."
+
+"Foolish boy!" said the young lady, squeezing his arm. "Do you think I
+want to dance all summer long with _other_ men?"
+
+Three-quarters of an hour later Skippy again, but alone, reached the
+protecting shadows. Again the orchestra was beating out an exhilarating
+measure.
+
+"You bet I'm not going to let her dance with other men," he said under
+his breath. He balanced carefully, stretched out one arm to encircle an
+imaginary waist and started heavily to tread the illusive measure.
+Suddenly he realized that he was not alone. Farther down a couple were
+swaying in the shadows. Then Dolly's voice reached him.
+
+"The idea! Puffy, of course you can dance. If Jack Bedelle can learn,
+you ought to be ashamed to give up."
+
+"Skippy dance!"
+
+"Of course, foolish boy! Do you want to sit and watch him dance with me
+_all_ summer?"
+
+That evening after he had escorted the triumphant Dolly Travers home in
+company of four other victims, Skippy went heavily upward to his room.
+
+"Hello there!" said the big brother from his bed.
+
+"Hello, Sambo," said Skippy, slinking in disconsolately.
+
+"What's the matter, bub? You look like a plucked chicken. You've been
+moping around for a week. What is the matter with you anyhow?"
+
+"What is the matter?" said Skippy, staring at him.
+
+"Exactly, what is the matter?"
+
+"The matter is, I took your advice," said Skippy reproachfully. "You
+told me to pick out something young and easy."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Well, I did it," said Skippy, who then, without noticing Mr. Sam's
+growing interest, began to unburden himself.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Three days later, about five in the afternoon, Skippy emerged from
+behind the Gutter Pup's barn, leaving Mr. Puffy Ellis to readjust
+himself with more painful leisure. Skippy was somewhat bruised himself,
+and his clothes were a sight to behold, but he was happy. Mr. Puffy
+Ellis had finally seen the light and one obstacle at least had been
+removed from the summer.
+
+"I may not be much shakes on my feet as yet," said Skippy to himself
+grimly, "but thank the Lord I can use my fists." He remembered certain
+gorgeous passages in "The Count of Monte Cristo" and, thinking of what
+still remained to be done, said tragically, "So much for _one_!"
+
+Suddenly, in front of the Travers home, he beheld a buckboard draw up,
+and as with rising anger he pressed forward for a view of the next
+rival, Miss Dolly Travers tripped down, gave her hand delightedly, and
+sprang to the seat.
+
+Another rival, another Puffy Ellis to crush! Unmindful of anything but
+his consuming jealousy, he strode forward, fists doubled and glowering.
+The next moment the carriage had swung up and passed him. Miss Dolly
+Travers, blissfully entranced with her new conquest, had not even
+noticed him, standing there humbly in the road! But worse than that--oh,
+perfidy of perfidies--at the reins was no other than the great man of
+the university, his brother Mr. Sambones Bedelle!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+ANTICS OF A TALKING MACHINE
+
+
+TOOTSIE BEDELLE, in the days following the opening of the summer season
+at Gates Harbor, was considerably mystified by the actions of the family
+phonograph. Now while a talking machine is admittedly endowed with one
+human attribute, it is supposed to be a talking and not a walking
+machine. Yet unless it were endowed with motive power, how explain the
+sudden oddities of its appearances and disappearances?
+
+The evening after the first hop at the club, Tootsie broke upon the
+family dinner table with the frantic announcement:
+
+"The phonograph's gone! Stolen!"
+
+"Stolen!" said Skippy incredulously.
+
+"Stolen!" said Mr. Bedelle with his eat 'em alive expression.
+
+"Why it was there this morning," said Clara.
+
+"Well, it's not there now and it wasn't there this afternoon!"
+
+The entire Bedelle family broke for the parlor. There in its accustomed
+corner was the phonograph. When quiet had been restored Tootsie again
+announced.
+
+"It was _not_ there this afternoon!"
+
+"Who was there, Tootsie dear?" said Clara maliciously.
+
+Tootsie's reply woke up Mr. Bedelle, who considered himself a nervous
+dyspeptic and, being already in a state of antidigestive excitation,
+glowered and imposed silence on the entire younger generation.
+
+"Well, it's _my_ phonograph, anyhow!" said Tootsie sulkily, and dinner
+over she hastened to the parlor. The phonograph was still there. She
+went to bed a little shaken in her convictions. But the next morning,
+returning early from the beach, she happened to glance into the parlor.
+The phonograph had disappeared again! Tootsie could not believe her
+eyes. She advanced cautiously and felt with both hands, but her groping
+fingers encountered nothing but thin air. Then she searched behind the
+curtains, moved the furniture and opened all the hall closets. There was
+no question about it this time, the phonograph certainly had vanished
+from the house!
+
+Half an hour later, as Mr. and Mrs. Bedelle were sauntering back from
+the morning plunge, the frantic figure of Miss Tootsie came flying down
+the road.
+
+"Good gracious, Tootsie! What _has_ happened?" exclaimed Mrs. Bedelle,
+trying to remember whether the dioxygen and the bandages had been
+unpacked.
+
+"It's gone!"
+
+"Gone? What, who, where?"
+
+"The phonograph's gone again."
+
+"Now Tootsie," said Mr. Bedelle, elevating a cautionary finger.
+
+"Don't agitate yourself, John," said Mrs. Bedelle.
+
+"Father, it is gone! I saw it!"
+
+"Saw it?"
+
+"I mean I saw it wasn't there and I searched everywhere. I saw it with
+my own eyes," said Tootsie incoherently, and between rage and tears she
+repeated her account in a manner to be completely unintelligible. Mr.
+Bedelle was a theorist afflicted with indigestion. He carefully selected
+his diet with due regard for starch values and never ate a raw tomato
+without first carefully removing the seeds. He was likewise particularly
+careful never to sit down to a process of digestion in an agitated mood.
+His irritation therefore considerably aggravated by his daughter's case
+of nerves, he hastened on to the house.
+
+"I looked everywhere, Daddy, honest I did and it--" Suddenly Tootsie
+stopped and her jaw fell. There in its accustomed place, reposing on the
+table, was the phonograph.
+
+"Tootsie!" said Mr. Bedelle in puffy rage.
+
+"Yes, Daddy."
+
+"Go to that machine. Put your hand on it. Feel it. Is it or is it not a
+phonograph?"
+
+"It is."
+
+"Is it yours?"
+
+"Yes, Daddy."
+
+"Write out fifty times 'I must not get excited before mealtime,' Don't
+leave the house until you have done it."
+
+"Very well, Daddy."
+
+Mr. Bedelle went to his easy-chair on the back porch and began to fan
+himself. Tootsie, staring at the phonograph, began seriously to
+consider. Her suspicions were aroused and her first suspicion was the
+instinctive one of sister to sister.
+
+"Good gracious! I believe the child thinks I did it," said Clara, at
+luncheon, after Tootsie's stare had remained in fixed accusation upon
+her.
+
+"Not a word! Not another word about that phonograph," said Mr. Bedelle
+wrathfully, "If this whole family has got to be upset every time I sit
+down to the table, I will have the whole thing made into mincemeat."
+
+"Well, it's my phonograph," said Tootsie sullenly, and immediately
+departed for her room--by request.
+
+For two days the phonograph remained quiescent, but about this time Miss
+Clara Bedelle announced that some one had been tampering with her
+figure.
+
+"Your figure, Clara? How shocking!" said the older brother.
+
+"My dressmaker's figure, and what's more, some one," said Clara,
+looking hard at Tootsie, "_Some one_ has been in my closet and disturbed
+my dresses!"
+
+"How _very_ strange," said Tootsie sarcastically. "Are you sure it isn't
+your imagination--child?"
+
+"And I know who did it."
+
+"Perhaps you know, too, who stole my phonograph," said Tootsie angrily.
+
+The next afternoon the phonograph departed for four hours. Tootsie
+searched her sister's bedroom and then called Skippy into consultation.
+
+"It's Clara all right," said Skippy. "We must set a watch on her."
+
+"She has a mean and spiteful nature. She does it just to get me
+punished."
+
+"Leave it to me."
+
+"What will you do?"
+
+"Say, what's it worth?"
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"What do I get if I catch her red hot?"
+
+"I'll give a dollar," said Tootsie recklessly.
+
+"That's too much," said Skippy, with an appearance of generosity. "I'll
+sleuth for a quarter a day. Cash in advance. But my orders go. Savvy?"
+
+Tootsie paid down the fee, and following instructions departed next
+morning with the family for the beach, while Skippy, returning across
+lots, wriggled on his stomach over the lawn and slipped into the house
+by the cellar window. For three days Tootsie duly paid out her quarter
+and received the most comforting of reports. On the fourth day, however,
+a discussion arose.
+
+"'Course if you sit there, no one's goin' to come," she said, fingering
+her last quarter. "I know it's Clara by the look in her eyes."
+
+"Sit there! What kind of a sleuth do you think I am?" he said
+indignantly. "Look here. See that phonograph--see anything queer about
+it? Pick it up."
+
+Instantly the grating sounds of a dinner bell were heard and a horrible
+crash.
+
+"Lookout! Don't drop it, you chump! See that string that passes down the
+back of the wall and into the closet?" said Skippy, proudly exhibiting a
+patent alarm which he had constructed with the aid of a delicately
+balanced dishpan. "I'm in the dining-room under the table. Well what?"
+
+"Heavens! If Daddy ever sets that off!"
+
+"He won't. You bet, I'll see to that," said Skippy hastily. "Well what?
+Do I get another quarter?"
+
+There was a slight mental indecision after which the quarter came
+reluctantly to the detective. Tootsie went thoughtfully down to the
+beach. The new method did redound to the stability of the phonograph,
+but was Skippy really working as rapidly as he could?
+
+"I should have offered a dollar and no more," said Tootsie to herself.
+"If this keeps up I'll be broke in a week."
+
+So distressing was this outlook, that her mind refused to be diverted,
+and after a brief hesitation she returned to the house, intent on a more
+satisfactory financial arrangement. Now Tootsie was as fond of mystery
+stories as Skippy himself, and so with due regard to etiquette she
+dodged down the hedge, slunk behind the lilacs, and noiselessly let
+herself into the dining-room window. Then, cautiously, on hands and
+knees, she approached the mysteries of the dining-room table, behind the
+red cloth of which Skippy was to be waiting.
+
+"Hist! It's me," she said in a wary whisper. Then, having consumed ten
+minutes in moving six feet serpent fashion across the creaky floor, she
+gained the table. Skippy was not there. She rose violently, bumping her
+head, scrambled out and rushed into the parlor. The phonograph likewise
+had disappeared.
+
+"He's on the trail at last," she thought excitedly. "Hurray!"
+
+But at that precise moment the strangest of strange, uncanny sounds was
+heard. Tootsie stood stock still and listened with a pumping heart.
+There was no question about it, the phonograph was gone, yet faintly,
+like a sinking moan, she heard, she was sure she heard, the thin, tinny
+sounds of a Sousa two-step. The room was dim, the house deserted. For
+one brief moment she stood panic-stricken, poised for flight. Then she
+shook her head angrily.
+
+[Illustration: The partner of his arms, escaping, rolled over towards
+Tootsie. _Page 182_]
+
+"Fiddlesticks, phonographs don't have ghosts!"
+
+And listening more intently, she gradually located the familiar strains
+as coming from the distant carriage house. In a fever of expectancy
+Tootsie flew across the lawns and gained the open door. Above her the
+phonograph was pumping out the thrilling measures of the latest
+two-step, but what puzzled her immediately were the scuffling, shifting
+sounds, like a scurry of rats, which accompanied it. Then a suspicion of
+the truth came to her and she tiptoed up the stairs. On the open floor
+Skippy with his arms about a strange shape was painfully treading in and
+out of a maze which, with a bench, a barrel and two chairs, he had
+arranged to visualize the perils of the ballroom.
+
+"Thief!"
+
+Skippy started, shied into the bench and went over backwards while the
+partner of his arms, escaping, rolled over towards Tootsie, discovering
+under Clara's best organdie dress the net-work of wire which made up the
+missing dressmaker's form!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+CONTAINING SOME HIGH MELODRAMA
+
+
+THERE are great moments in life when the acquired veneer of society
+drops away and human beings revert to type. Tootsie lay down on her back
+and kicked her legs in the air, howling with glee. Skippy, disentangling
+himself from the bench, rose with slow deliberation. He saw that he
+faced a crisis. If Tootsie, now rolling before him in hysterical agony,
+ever was allowed to tell such a story as this, there would be no future
+for John C. Bedelle but to ship before the mast. Skippy thought hard and
+Skippy had the instincts of a diplomat. He decided to begin with a light
+conciliatory manner.
+
+"Well, Tootsie, old girl, you've got the goods on me. What's your
+price?"
+
+Tootsie's reply was a succession of hysterical gasps that sounded like a
+child with the whooping cough laughing over a comic section.
+
+"What's your price?" Skippy repeated more firmly, but striving to
+maintain a sickly smile.
+
+"OW! OW! OW!" said Tootsie, holding in her sides.
+
+Skippy began to be alarmed. He thought a moment and then carefully
+removed the dressmaker's form and hid it behind a packing-case. But the
+sight of Skippy's dancing companion brought forth a fresh attack of
+hysterics. Then he had recourse to water and a dripping oily sponge. The
+sight of this so affected Tootsie that she rose precipitately and
+staggered to a chair. Skippy at once abandoned the sponge and
+sympathetically proffered his handkerchief.
+
+"It's goin' to cost me a lot of money," he thought, considering her with
+anxiety. He had fifteen dollars stowed away with the intention of adding
+it to the cash returns of his approaching birthday and acquiring his
+first dress suit. He made a mental surrender and advancing to the
+somewhat calmer Tootsie, a third time asked:
+
+"Well, come on! What's your price?"
+
+"Thief!" said Tootsie, all at once remembering her grievance.
+
+"Oh, I say, can't you take a joke?"
+
+"A joke! Wait'll I get even with you, Mr. Smarty!"
+
+"Go easy. Name your terms."
+
+"And I paid you to watch it!" said Tootsie, whose anger began to rise as
+her respiration returned.
+
+Skippy mournfully admitted to himself that this had been an unnecessary
+aggravation.
+
+"Shucks! You didn't think I was going to keep the money, did you?" he
+said, bringing out a dollar bill and tendering it humbly.
+
+Tootsie put the bill from her with the gesture of a tragedy queen, stood
+up, straightened her skirt and said:
+
+"Just you wait, thief!"
+
+"What are you going to do?"
+
+"My business."
+
+"You're not going to tell?" said Skippy, who had no doubt of her
+intention.
+
+"Oh dear no! Oh no indeed!" said Tootsie, moving to depart.
+
+Skippy sprang ahead, slammed the door, locked it and pocketed the key.
+
+"What good does that do?" said Tootsie disdainfully.
+
+"You'll not leave this room until you swear a solemn oath," said Skippy
+desperately.
+
+"All right, I guess I can wait if you can," said Tootsie, settling down.
+"But I pity you when Dad gets hold of you--thief!"
+
+Skippy deliberated, resolved on anything short of murder to stifle the
+threatening exposure. Sterner methods were necessary. All at once his
+eye spied a coil of rope in the corner and he sprang to it with a shout.
+
+"What are you going to do?" said Tootsie wrathfully.
+
+"I am going to tie and gag and leave you to starve," said Skippy,
+swinging a lasso.
+
+There was a short and painful tussle in which his necktie was torn to
+shreds and he surrendered a certain amount of hair, but at the end of
+which, Miss Tootsie, tied hand and foot to a chair, was propped up
+against a pillar, while her conqueror proceeded to roll up his
+handkerchief with the evident intention of applying a gag.
+
+"You'll like it when the rats come around," he said gloomily.
+
+"Fiddlesticks! You can't scare me," said Tootsie with alarming calm.
+
+"And there are bats too, don't forget the bats that get their claws in
+your hair," said Skippy, approaching with the gag, "and not a soul to
+hear your cries, you tattle-tale!"
+
+"You'll get the licking of your life," said Tootsie, looking at him
+steadily. "Thief!"
+
+"So you won't name your price!" said Skippy, passing behind her and
+holding the gag before her eyes.
+
+"Not if you murder me--you thief!"
+
+Skippy again considered.
+
+"She doesn't scare worth a darn," he acknowledged to himself. Instead of
+applying the gag he departed to the opposite side, sat down and began to
+think. At the end of a long moment he rose and approached her with a
+brisk set manner.
+
+"So you're going to tell, are you?"
+
+"You just bet I'm going to tell, you coward!"
+
+"All right, tell then!" He stooped, freed her legs and arms and rose.
+"Tell if you've made up your mind to--but God help you if you do.
+That's all I have to say."
+
+"You can't scare me," said Tootsie, but already intrigued by the new
+plan of action which she divined behind her brother's silence.
+
+"No, but there's some one I can scare!" said Skippy, unlocking the door.
+"All right! War to the knife, Miss Tootsie! Remember, though, I warned
+you!"
+
+"Who are you threatening now?" said Tootsie, trying to conceal her
+anxiety; for long association had engendered a lively respect for the
+Skippy imagination.
+
+"I never threaten," said Skippy disdainfully, "but if that red-haired,
+knock-kneed, overfed beau of yours ever sets foot on this place again,
+he comes in a hearse! And what goes for him, goes for all! Go on and
+tell, but you'll have the loneliest summer you've ever had, young lady!"
+
+Five minutes later a treaty of peace was concluded on the basis of
+secret understandings secretly arrived at, and Miss Tootsie Bedelle
+replaced the dressmaker's figure in the arms of the triumphant diplomat
+while the phonograph gave forth the strains of the Washington Post.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Tootsie's terpsichorean assistance was sorely needed. Skippy was not a
+natural glider and gliding as Tootsie explained to him was essential in
+a ballroom, in polite society at least. Skippy's feet could skip, hop
+and jump with the best, but they were not, in any sense of the word,
+gliders. The change from the inanimate embrace of the dressmaker's form
+to Tootsie's pliant figure, however, worked such miracles that at the
+end of twenty minutes' industrious application, Tootsie expressed
+herself as astonished and delighted.
+
+Now of course Skippy could have gone for instruction to Dolly Travers,
+who was the object of these secret efforts. But that was not the Skippy
+way. He had always shunned any exhibition of inferiority. Whatever was
+to be learned he learned in privacy and exhibited in public. He had
+taught himself to shoot marbles, to solve the intricate sequences of
+mumblety peg, to throw an out-curve, to pick up a double hitch with one
+hand, to chin himself, skin the cat and hang by his toes behind the safe
+seclusion of the barn wall. Whatever his failures they were not
+accompanied by the jeers of an audience. He had gone off in secret to
+the swimming pool by Bretton's creek and smarted for hours under
+crashing belly-whoppers until he had taught himself to dive forward and
+backward. Then he watched with grinning superiority the fate of less
+experienced youngsters who followed his dare.
+
+So in the present sentimental crisis. To rank in the estimation of Miss
+Dolly Travers there was no escaping the fact that he would have to
+surrender his prejudices and incline his feet to the popular way. But
+having reached this decision he determined to stage his effects. For two
+more Saturdays he continued in dignified isolation to escort Miss
+Travers to the weekly hop and back, guarding her scarf and fan,
+straining his mouth into the semblance of an interested smile while
+other fellows slipped their arms around the tiny figure and moved
+dexterously or heavily about the ballroom.
+
+On the third Saturday, halfway to the club house, just as he had
+planned, Miss Dolly returned to the point of discussion.
+
+"Jack, aren't you ever, ever going to learn to dance?"
+
+"Oh well, perhaps some day," he said casually.
+
+"But you can't go through life without dancing!"
+
+"Oh no, of course not."
+
+"Really I think it's just too selfish of you. You know how I adore it.
+Why won't you try? I do believe you're afraid of being laughed at."
+
+Skippy smiled craftily to himself.
+
+"Well, perhaps I'll have a try."
+
+"That's what you've said every time," said Miss Dolly, shrugging her
+shoulders.
+
+Skippy bided his opportunity until the third two-step had begun and the
+claimants for the favorite's hand were congregating.
+
+"I'm sitting this out with Jack," said Dolly, with a sigh.
+
+"Say, a fossil who can't dance oughtn't to have any rights around here,
+nohow," said Happy Mather. "You're only a clothes horse anyway, Skippy."
+
+Dolly burst out laughing at this, which pained Skippy exceedingly.
+
+"Oh, any chump can dance if he wants to."
+
+"You think so?"
+
+"Sure. Easiest thing in the world if I wanted to."
+
+"Easy?"
+
+"Sure. Just keeping in time, that's all."
+
+"Here's a dollar you can't get three times around the room."
+
+Skippy pretended to hesitate.
+
+"I'll pay another dollar any day to see a circus," said Joe Crocker,
+beginning to smirk.
+
+"Dolly, hold the money," said Skippy.
+
+Miss Dolly looked up in some consternation for the group now numbered a
+half a dozen and the floor was vast and bare.
+
+"Don't you want to wait a little?" she said with a glance at Crocker,
+who was nudging his neighbor.
+
+"What's the use?" said Skippy. "Now tell me again what I do."
+
+"Two steps with the left forward and then two steps with the right. Hold
+my arm so," said Dolly a little breathlessly.
+
+"Hold on tight, Skippy," said Happy Mather.
+
+"Step on your own feet."
+
+"Balance on your heels."
+
+"Don't let them rattle you, Jack."
+
+"They can't. Which foot do I start on?"
+
+"The left."
+
+"Shall we give him a push, Dolly?" said Lazelle sympathetically, while
+his companions, linking arms, were beaming with anticipated delight.
+
+Skippy, having properly worked up his audience, nodded to his partner
+and floated off in a perfect dancing style.
+
+"Jack, you wretch, you've danced for years!" said Dolly after the first
+surprise had passed. "You've just been making fun of me all this time."
+
+"Never been on a ballroom floor before in my life," said Skippy, keeping
+within the letter of the truth.
+
+"Why you're wonderful, Jack! But then how could you--"
+
+"It's mental, everything is mental," said Skippy conceitedly. "I just
+watched till I got it in my mind and the rest was easy. Thanks for the
+long green. Hello, what's become of our little gallery of nuts?"
+
+Whether or not Dolly was entirely convinced by this casual explanation,
+the immediate return to Skippy was enormous. Not only were the claimants
+to her affections completely distanced, but Miss Dolly, for a time,
+adopted an attitude of respect and deference towards him, which had
+formerly been totally lacking.
+
+Skippy was tremendously in love. There was no doubt about that. You
+could see it in the dishpan glow of his scrubbed forehead, in the
+spotless flannels and the lily white hands. There was something secure
+and permanent in the attachment. Dolly was not sentimental and only
+distantly affectionate, but she was absorbing. There was no question of
+an eight-hour day in his case. From nine A.M. until Mr. Travers
+ostentatiously began to bar the library windows for the night, Mr.
+Skippy Bedelle was at one end of a wire with Miss Dolly Travers at the
+other, pushing the button.
+
+That practical young lady, realizing that Skippy's earning capacity was
+still woefully limited, permitted no allusions to the distant holy bonds
+of matrimony, but she did allow him to mortgage his future to the extent
+of the promenade and dances which would decorate his scholastic and
+collegiate journey, as well as attendance at all athletic contests of
+any nature whatsoever. On his birthday (when the sinking fund toward the
+first dress suit rose to the colossal sum of fifty dollars) they
+solemnly exchanged pins, Dolly openly sporting the red and black of
+Lawrenceville, while Skippy concealed in the secret recesses of his tie
+a little gold wishbone which would lead him to the higher prizes in
+life, add three inches to his stature and the additional twenty pounds
+necessary to qualify for the varsity.
+
+His fall from grace was of course the subject of great merriment among
+his companions, particularly Happy Mather and Joe Crocker in whom memory
+still rankled. A direct insult was of course dangerous, but there were
+other subtler ways. At least half a dozen times a day some one was sure
+to ask him,
+
+"I say, Skippy, what's doing to-night?"
+
+"Got anything on this afternoon?"
+
+But Skippy brushed aside their crude attempts at persiflage with
+indifference. He had won out. The courted prize was his. For two weeks
+not a cloud obtruded on the clear sky of his content. Dolly bullied and
+bossed him. He did her errands. He fetched and carried. He served her
+and no other goddess. And then tragedy arrived with the arrival of the
+celebrated Hickey Hicks, who came down to spend a fortnight with the
+Triumphant Egghead.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+HICKEY IN A DEADLY RÔLE
+
+
+HICKEY, be it remembered, had just severed his connections with the
+Lawrenceville school after a display of pedagogical despotism which had
+no parallel except in the case of the celebrated Captain Dreyfus. Just
+because certain disturbing incidents had occurred in close succession,
+beginning with the theft of the clapper; the disappearance of Tabby's
+bed, when that inexperienced young master had dashed two miles down the
+Trenton road in search of fictitious burglars; the famous Fed and
+anti-Fed riots when a misdirected effort to inculcate the love of
+politics had almost resulted in a recourse to the financial institution
+which insures the school against destruction by fire or otherwise--the
+head master, without an iota of evidence (he acknowledged it frankly),
+had requested the Hon. Hickey Hicks to seek a wider field for the
+admittedly fertile powers which were peculiarly his.
+
+When Hickey with his resplendent social manner cast the eye of favor on
+Dolly Travers, after having remarked her unquestioned superiority with
+the light fantastic toe, Skippy felt exactly the way the Vicomte de
+Bragelonne did when royalty appeared to claim the hand of Louise de la
+Vallière. Hickey was in the heavy middleweight class while he was still
+a bantam. Hickey was one of the princely figures of school tradition. He
+came, he saw, he conquered. He was an athlete, whose arrival was
+disputed by the three leading colleges. Sambones Bedelle himself,
+captain of next year's Yale varsity nine, allowed himself to be seen
+publicly with his arm resting affectionately over Hickey's shoulders.
+With such a halo it was no wonder that Dolly in her early teens should
+have yielded to the flattery of his preference. Skippy acknowledged so
+much to himself as he stood on the fringe of the spectators and watched
+Dolly with rapturous upturned face whirling about the room in the arms
+of the great man.
+
+"What ye doin' to-morrow afternoon, Skippy?" said Puffy Ellis, who
+enjoyed the reversal of rôles.
+
+"I'm cleaning up the mitts. Want to come around?" said Skippy, with what
+is commonly described as a steely look.
+
+Puffy did not pursue the subject and the chip on Skippy's shoulder
+remained unchallenged.
+
+How Hickey danced! The days had not arrived when acrobatic feats had
+invaded the decorum of the ballroom, and such simple departures from the
+routine as dos-à-dos and single hand were enough to provoke envy and
+astonishment.
+
+Skippy forgot his irritation as he watched the graceful guiding of his
+rival. Hickey certainly could dance! He admitted it. Never with or
+without the assistance of a dressmaker's manikin could he ever hope to
+rival him in this accomplishment. He went dutifully to claim his turn
+with the faithless one. His heart was acutely torn and he knew the
+peculiar delight he was affording his numerous friends, but he forced a
+smile of indifference. Besides, in his fertile imagination he had the
+glimmerings of a stratagem.
+
+"I've saved the fifth two-step and the seventh waltz for you," said
+Dolly, squeezing his arm ever so lightly, "though you haven't asked me
+yet."
+
+The summer was long and she was quite aware that in another ten days the
+resplendent Mr. Hicks would pass as Shelley had passed. Besides she
+secretly admired Skippy's sporting manner in adversity.
+
+"Awfully good of you," he said lightly, "but see here, Dolly, don't
+bother about me. Hickey's got us all skinned hollow when it comes to
+this game. Go ahead, keep on dancing with him. Go as far as you like."
+
+"My, but he waltzes divinely!" said Dolly, relieved.
+
+"He's a wonder, all right, and a cracker-jack at anything he touches!
+Sambones says he'll make the varsity, certain next year."
+
+"What happened about his leaving school?"
+
+"That--that was an outrage," said Skippy, who would have scorned to
+attack a rival meanly. "I'll tell you all about that."
+
+"You're sure you don't mind my dancing so much with him?" said Dolly,
+who had allowed Hickey to cut in six dances running.
+
+"I? Bless you, no!"
+
+"It's just his wonderful dancing," said Dolly, looking down.
+
+"Don't blame you. He is A No. 1 with his feet all right," said Skippy,
+and he added carelessly, "wonderful how he manages it, too, with his
+infirmity."
+
+"His infirmity?" said Dolly, startled.
+
+"Did I say infirmity?" said Skippy, pretending surprise. "For heaven's
+sake, don't tell any one. Gee, I shouldn't have said that."
+
+"Yes, but what infirmity?" said Dolly, now in a high state of
+excitement.
+
+Skippy compressed his lips to show that they were forever sealed, and
+moved away. But he noted with satisfaction that the next time Miss Dolly
+Travers passed whirling about the great man, instead of the rapturous
+upturned gaze, was one of alarmed curiosity.
+
+The next day at the beach Dolly opened up at once the question of
+infirmities.
+
+"Dolly," said Skippy firmly, "I'm not going to say any more, so it's no
+use trying to pump me. I'm ashamed to have said what I did. A feller
+can't help what he's got, or what he hasn't got, can he? And it's only
+a foolish prejudice after all."
+
+"But Jack--"
+
+"There was another fellow at school," said Skippy, without attention,
+"who had a glass eye, but he was a positive nuisance. He used to take it
+out and leave it around. No one could stand roomin' with him. It
+certainly gave you the creeps to be lookin' on the table for a collar
+button or a pen and find--"
+
+But here Dolly gave a shriek and fled with her hands over her ears.
+
+Now Skippy had made no direct insinuation (he always had the greatest
+respect for the letter of the truth), but it is a fact that when
+forty-eight hours later the Mathers gave a dance, Hickey became suddenly
+aware of a complete change of attitude among the feminine portion of his
+admirers.
+
+"What the deuce is wrong with me, anyhow?" he said after the second
+dance. He went outside and scrupulously examined himself in the mirror.
+Then he went back and tried another partner. Again the strange feeling
+stole over him. Every time he brought the battery of his blue eyes to
+bear upon his partner her eyes turned uneasily away and the moment his
+own glance was averted, back hers came, in an uncanny fixed
+interrogation. The night was a triumph for Skippy, who danced eight
+times with Miss Dolly Travers and had the further satisfaction of
+observing her in a state of nerves after each of the two which she
+begrudged to Mr. Hicks.
+
+But alas for Skippy and his short moment of triumph! Within twenty-four
+hours the mystified Hickey had discovered the truth and Hickey was one
+that was never lightly challenged.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+SITTING IT OUT
+
+
+SKIPPY, fatuously unconscious of any overtaking fate, escorted Dolly to
+the next Saturday night hop. On Monday Mr. Hickey Hicks would be on his
+way to new pastures and life would return to simpler terms. Dolly,
+however, was in no amiable frame of mind.
+
+"You said he had a glass eye. You know you did," she said for the tenth
+time.
+
+"Now that's just like a woman," thought Skippy, justly offended, and out
+loud he said, with some asperity, "_You_ said so. I never did."
+
+"I?"
+
+"Sure, you did! Why you said it was the left one."
+
+"Well, you let me think so anyway."
+
+"How was I to know?" said Skippy, illogically. "Perhaps he has a glass
+eye. Have you asked him?"
+
+They reached the club house and as the orchestra was already
+industriously at work, Skippy said playfully,
+
+"All's fair in love and war anyhow! S'pose we dance."
+
+"You don't deserve it," said Dolly, hesitating. She glanced around and
+as no one else was an immediate prospect, she accorded him her arm.
+Skippy began to perceive that the burden of conversation would lie with
+him.
+
+The next dance was a waltz and they waited, the one expectantly, the
+other in resignation for the usual rush of the stags which invariably
+accompanied Miss Dolly's conquering arrival. As she was endowed with a
+lively sense of humor, her irritation had quite departed and Skippy was
+as blissfully happy in his restoration to favor as the four-footed puppy
+when reconciliation with the master has followed chastisement. To keep
+fidelity with human nature, it must likewise be recorded that the
+practical sense was likewise strong in the young lady, who was fully
+aware of the value of a bird in the hand to one about to fly the bush.
+Hickey appeared and came directly towards them. Skippy fell back.
+
+"Hello, Skippy, old top," said Hickey, with accented cordiality. He
+shook hands with Miss Dolly, who greeted him with the most encouraging
+of smiles. He complimented her on the bewitching gown which made her
+prettier than ever, wondered where she had been all this time, shook
+hands effusively--and passed on. Miss Dolly bit her lip and took hasty
+survey of the room. The old reliables were all actively engaged,
+spinning about the room with other partners.
+
+"Oh, I adore this tune," she said suddenly. "Come on, let's waltz."
+
+Then, just to show her independence, she suggested that the next dance,
+a polka, was a dreadful bore and Skippy, still unsuspicious, bore her
+away in great delight to the shadowy intimacies of the veranda. Miss
+Dolly was a little quicker in her perceptions. She saw what was up, and
+being of high spirit, decided to answer in kind. She returned to the
+floor and danced a third time with Skippy, who was too fatuously pleased
+with his good fortune to notice the suppressed hilarity in the room.
+
+"Let's sit here," said Dolly, selecting the most public spot. When Happy
+Mather and Crocker and Lazelle and the superior Mr. Hicks did arrive,
+she would have her revenge. She would refuse flatly. She would dance
+with Skippy openly and defiantly the whole evening. The only drawback
+was that no one came.
+
+They sat out two dances and then a feeling of panic descended upon them.
+They were horribly, glaringly conspicuous. Every eye was on them. Every
+one was whispering at their expense. Dolly had never known the sensation
+of being a wallflower, and for the first time her natural wit deserted
+her. At first she had deployed all the instinctive arts of her
+challenged coquetry. She had openly flaunted her affection for Skippy,
+smiling into his fascinated eyes, laughing uproariously at the
+inanities he had to offer. Then her spirits suddenly evaporated and she
+listened with a cold creepy feeling in her back, while Skippy, in
+desperation for a topic of conversation, began to explain the
+intricacies of Mosquito-Proof Socks, to perfecting which his life
+henceforth would be devoted.
+
+"Let's dance."
+
+Skippy, halfway in his exposition of the commercial value of an
+invention which would appeal to twice ninety million legs at six pair of
+socks a year, flushed and rose heavily. The light had dawned upon him at
+last. They were being put in coventry and the diabolical mind that was
+thus taking its fiendish revenge could be none other than the man he had
+wronged--Hickey Hicks.
+
+From now on it was torture, pure, unadulterated, exquisite torture, such
+as only the self-conscious stripling of the first sixteen awkward years
+can experience. To save his life he could not think of a thing to say,
+while in his arms Dolly grew heavier and heavier. His arm ached, his
+feet began to stumble, he bumped into other couples.
+
+After he had sat out the eighth dance in fitful silence, he began to
+experience the strangest antipathy for Miss Dolly Travers, who but an
+hour before had been the rapturous ending of all his day dreams. Let no
+cynic here exclaim, with facile wit, that romance ends thus in the
+compulsory quality of marriage. We make no such allusions. We only state
+that Skippy, in his inexperience, began morally to disintegrate. The
+more he was forced to sit, chained by convention, the object of public
+hilarity, the more he wondered at his former infatuation. Dolly disputed
+by every male was a figment of the imagination--how different was the
+reality! Mimi Lafontaine was a hundred times more desirable and at least
+had _something_ to say! The situation was hideous, but how escape? If
+only he could get to Hickey and buy him off! But he couldn't get to his
+tormentor, that was the trouble! Then suddenly an idea came to him. In
+his pocket was the roll of bills that comprised the sinking fund for his
+dress suit. Carefully and unnoticed by Dolly, he extracted a two dollar
+bill. When next he danced, he danced with the bill openly flaunted
+behind the all-unconscious Dolly, openly offering it to whoever would
+come to his rescue. Still the banded traitors smirked and remained loyal
+to their leader--they, too, had scores to settle!
+
+"Get me a glass of lemonade, won't you, Jack, like a dear?" said Dolly,
+who had thought of a possible opening.
+
+Skippy went and took a full five minutes until he had made quite sure
+the next dance was under way. To his horror Dolly was where he had left
+her--sitting alone.
+
+When the tenth dance had begun, he hesitated no longer. He replaced the
+two dollar bill by one of the next denomination, and with the V
+carefully exposed, he managed to bump into Hickey and draw his attention
+to the price of his liberty. Hickey appeared interested but only half
+convinced. Skippy held out another dance and then, groaning inwardly,
+increased the bait to ten.
+
+Whereupon Hickey condescended. The signal was given and Skippy, standing
+aloof and humble in the shadows of the veranda, perceived through the
+window Miss Dolly Travers, as the stags swarmed down, resume her sway as
+the queen of the ball.
+
+On Monday Hickey departed in a burst of glory. With him something else
+departed--a great romance. Illusions are fragile things and when they
+are shattered the pieces are too small to be reassembled. _Sic transit_
+Dolly Travers!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+DEAD GAME SPORTS
+
+
+AT the end of August, Mr. Skippy Bedelle met Mr. Snorky Green on the
+Fall River Boat, each being in complete agreement as to the economic
+superiority of the water route to the great metropolis, when the end in
+view was the acquisition of that radiant apotheosis of perfect manhood,
+the first dress suit.
+
+"Gee Whilikins, Skippy, you're enormous," said Snorky, measuring him
+with his eye. "How did you do it? I've only gained half an inch."
+
+"I'm twelve pounds heavier," said Skippy proudly. "Feel that."
+
+"Hard as nails!" said Snorky, pinching the proffered biceps. "You do
+look different, too."
+
+Skippy, thinking on Dolly Travers, blushed.
+
+"Got to shave every other day now," he said hastily, to cover his
+confusion.
+
+"Have a coffin nail?" said Snorky, feeling that a bold stroke was
+necessary to restore the balance.
+
+"Dyin' for one," said Skippy, who disliked the practice cordially. He
+selected a cigarette, tapped it on his hand and rolled the rim on the
+tip of his tongue. "Not bad."
+
+"Nice bouquet, eh?" said Snorky, who had listened in.
+
+"What? You betcha! What's the monogram?"
+
+"Uncle Ben. I swiped them," said Snorky, who was returning from a family
+visit. "Suppose we give the old tub the once over and see if there's
+anything worth looking at on board."
+
+Skippy allowed the cigarette to hang pendant from his lower lip, tilted
+his Panama with the purple and white band, sank his hands in his pockets
+and imitated carefully the dead game sporting slouch of his companion as
+they proceeded on their critical inspection of the feminine offering on
+the decks.
+
+"Rum bunch," said Snorky, who was putting it on for Skippy. "Little girl
+over there got nice eyes."
+
+"Piano legs."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Piano legs. Big as a porpoise in five years," said Skippy, putting it
+on for Snorky.
+
+"I daresay," said Snorky, who continued his efforts to impress his chum
+by staring down a large buxom lady who happened to glance their way.
+"Rather good-looking, the old fighting brunette over there."
+
+"Seemed interested in you."
+
+"Yes, rather," said Snorky, turning for a fatuous backward glance.
+
+"What's this?" said Skippy, suddenly interested.
+
+Ahead by the rail two young girls were watching curiously the vanishing
+outlines of the harbor.
+
+"That's class," said Snorky instantly.
+
+"You betcha!" said Skippy, noting the large leghorn hats dripping with
+rosebuds, the trim ruffled organdie dresses and the twin parasols, pink
+and mauve. The young ladies looked up curiously at their swaggering
+approach and then away. Skippy in his assiduous pursuit of fiction of
+the romantic tinge had often read of "velvety" eyes and pondered
+incredulously. For the first time in his life, suddenly, in the hazards
+of a crowded steamer, a young girl of irreproachable manners had looked
+at him and the eyes were undeniably "velvety." It troubled him. Not that
+he was susceptible to such a point, but it stirred memories of ancient
+readings into the night on soft window seats, or under green trees in
+the troubling warmth of spring days.
+
+"The blonde for mine," said Snorky pompously.
+
+"I didn't see her," said Skippy dreamily.
+
+They linked arms and passed in the rakish, indolent manner of thorough
+men of the world who know that but to be seen is to conquer. To their
+discomfiture the young ladies failed to notice the extreme distinction
+of their manly appearance and shortly afterward left the deck.
+
+"We failed to impress," said Skippy disconsolately.
+
+"A lot you know about women."
+
+"They never saw us."
+
+"Huh! Betcha they were sneaking looks at us every time we passed. Just
+you wait. They'll be out in a jiffy."
+
+"What'll we do?"
+
+"Pretend we're not interested."
+
+They stalked the deck ten times with a nonchalant, bored air, but
+slightly roving eyes.
+
+"They're waiting inside," said Snorky obstinately.
+
+"Well, you go and scout. I'll wait here," said Skippy, whose interest
+was only a determination not to be outshone by his chum of chums.
+
+In ten minutes Snorky was back, all excitement.
+
+"Just as I told you. They're in the front saloon playing cards. Come
+on."
+
+"What are you going to do?" said Skippy, hesitating.
+
+Snorky thought a moment.
+
+"We've got to put over something big."
+
+"Well, what?"
+
+Snorky thought again.
+
+"We must make 'em think we're high rollers;--yachts, race horses, and
+all that."
+
+"Well, how?"
+
+Snorky thought a third time.
+
+"How much money have you got?" said Skippy suddenly.
+
+"In cash?"
+
+"Sure. On you."
+
+"About forty-three dollars," said Snorky, who from time to time had been
+feeling with his fingers to assure himself that no pickpocket had
+outwitted him.
+
+"Fork it out. I've got an idea."
+
+"Is it all right?" said Snorky, who had reason to dread the Skippy
+imagination.
+
+"Fine and dandy. Don't worry. Trust me. Show 'em up."
+
+Snorky produced a twenty, two tens and three common-a-garden ones.
+
+"You keep a twenty and you stick it on top. Then you change the two tens
+into ones and that makes some whopping wad, doesn't it?"
+
+"Say, I don't get--"
+
+"Leave it to me," said Skippy, who led the way to the cigar counter.
+
+Ten minutes later Mr. Skippy Bedelle and Mr. Snorky Green, with large
+banded cigars, entered the ladies' saloon and carelessly installed
+themselves at a table next but one to that occupied by the young girls.
+
+"Well, old sport," said Snorky, twirling the mercifully unsmoked cigar
+in his fingers. "Suppose we go over our accounts?"
+
+"Always be businesslike," said Skippy, poising a pencil over a sheet of
+paper with plutocratic nonchalance.
+
+"Owe you thirty-five plunks for last night's poker game," said Snorky,
+raising his voice sufficiently.
+
+"That's right, and I owe--"
+
+"Hold on, me first."
+
+Snorky dug into his trousers and came up with a roll of greenbacks that
+made the colored porter who happened to be passing stumble in his step.
+
+"Twenty and ten and five, makes thirty-five," he said, peeling them off
+with a nimble exhibition of legerdemain which kept the lower bills well
+concealed.
+
+"Keerect," said Skippy, sweeping them towards him with a languidly
+indifferent air.
+
+"Then I borrowed a ten spot to tip the head waiter. Remember?"
+
+"I do remember."
+
+"Five and five. Correct?"
+
+"Keerect."
+
+"How do we stand on the ponies?"
+
+"Only fair," said Skippy. "We lost two and won one. I couldn't get our
+money up on the others."
+
+"Let's see. It was twenty-five bones each, wasn't it?" said Snorky,
+jogging his elbow, to notify him that the impression they were making
+was simply stupendous.
+
+"Right again."
+
+"That sets me back fifty plunks. That's easy. Here you are, one, two,
+three, four, five tens. Correct?"
+
+"Keerect," said Skippy, brushing in the greenbacks, with the same casual
+motion of his hand.
+
+"That squares me."
+
+"It does."
+
+"Now what's coming back?"
+
+Skippy in turn, after certain struggles with his trousers pocket,
+brought forth a bundle which could have done credit to a cattle king and
+said, as he slipped the elastic,
+
+"Twenty-five at five to one is just about one hundred and twenty-five."
+
+"That's all right, but how about the tip to Spike Murphy?"
+
+"Spike Murphy?" said Skippy, looking at him hard.
+
+"The fellow who put us wise."
+
+"Oh, that's all right," said Skippy, recovering a proper sporting
+manner. "Forget that. I cleaned up enough to handle a little thing like
+that."
+
+"Lucky dog!"
+
+"One hundred and twenty-five," said Skippy, going through the proper
+motions. "Twenty once, twice, three times, four and five. One hundred,
+and ten and twenty and twenty--"
+
+But at this moment, whether by chance, by intent or by the emotion
+caused by the display of such wealth, there was a crash from the nearby
+table and two magazines fell to the floor. Snorky, ever alert, sprang to
+his feet, retrieved the magazines and offered them to the blondest of
+the two with punctilious courtesy.
+
+"Allow me. I believe these belong to you?"
+
+"Oh thank you," said the young lady, looking quite distressed.
+
+"Awfully warm night, isn't it?" said Snorky, whose heart was pumping at
+his own unexampled audacity.
+
+"Sir, I do not think I have been introduced to you," said the young
+lady, stiffening and looking what to Snorky, at least, were daggers.
+
+He uttered several unintelligible sounds, flushed a fiery red and backed
+away.
+
+"Right where the chicken met the axe," said Skippy, who began to whistle
+a melancholy tune as he gathered up the scattered greenbacks. "Here
+comes mother."
+
+"Let's beat it," said Snorky, who felt a sudden need for a purer
+atmosphere.
+
+"You know women better than I do," said Skippy, who though a chum was
+human.
+
+"Damn them all," said Snorky, peering over the railing into the night
+and exposing his forehead to the cooling breeze. "But why the devil did
+she lead me on?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+EXPERIMENTS IN A DRESS SUIT
+
+
+WHEN they descended at the Southampton station the family coach was in
+waiting. They surrendered their valises to the footman while each clung
+tightly to a large square paper box, carefully protected and corded.
+
+"Gee, it'll just about knock the wind out of old Caroline," said Snorky
+in a whisper.
+
+"Don't they suspect?" said Skippy nervously.
+
+"Not for a minute. Say, I'd never have the nerve to sport it alone."
+
+"Have you got the box with the shirt studs in?" said Skippy fidgeting.
+
+"Why I handed it--"
+
+"That's so. They're here," said Skippy, after a dip into four pockets.
+
+At the thought that at last after sixteen long and eventful years the
+supreme moment had come when he would step out of the shell of
+adolescence and greet the waiting world in his first forty-dollar,
+custom-made dress suit, in high collar, white stiff bosom, two tails
+pendant, Skippy shivered slightly and drew a deep, delightfully
+terrified breath.
+
+"We'll put it over all right," he said loudly, and he began to whistle
+as is the instinct of boyhood, whether facing the possibility of a
+parental caning; screwing up courage to ring her doorbell; or turning a
+gloomy corner in the moonlight where something horrid and shapeless may
+be lurking.
+
+Twenty minutes later, as he was solicitously examining the crease in the
+soft lovely black trousers, after hanging the swallow-tailed coat over a
+padded hanger, Snorky came in with a face of thunder.
+
+"Well, what _do_ you think?" he said nervously.
+
+"They forgot to put in the pants," said Skippy, leaping to the worst.
+
+"Shucks, no. There's a party on to-night."
+
+"A party?"
+
+"There'll be millions of people to dinner and a dance after."
+
+"What of it?" said Skippy loudly, though the chill began to ascend from
+his feet.
+
+"My Lord--"
+
+"Say, you're not losing your nerve, you chicken-hearted rabbit, are
+you?" said Skippy, who was now absolutely terrified.
+
+"You mean you're game?"
+
+"Snorky! I wouldn't have believed it of you!"
+
+"Say, it isn't your family or your sister," said Snorky angrily. "My
+aunt's cat's pants, how they'll howl!"
+
+Skippy prepared for the great event by what would have sufficed for a
+European semi-annual immersion and, emerging spotless and stainless
+from the bath, with his derby closely pressed over the niceties of his
+parted hair, perceived that he had still forty-two minutes left of the
+hour and a half he had allotted to this supreme toilette.
+
+"My Lord, I hope I've got everything," he said, standing in diaphanous
+contemplation. The one thing that worried him a little was the studs.
+They had looked over twenty different varieties, flat ones and solid
+gold ones, spirals, encrusted studs, and studs that anchored with a
+queer twist. Finally they had allowed themselves to be persuaded by a
+flashy clerk and settled on a patent imitation pearl stud that pushed in
+and stuck, simplest thing in the world, like the click of a spring lock;
+that would leave the beautiful creamy white expanse of shirt absolutely
+unruffled by any preliminary struggle.
+
+"Shall I try 'em on first?" he thought, glancing down at the immaculate
+bosom. But at this moment a voice behind him cried pompously.
+
+"Old top. Cast your eye on this."
+
+Skippy gazed and his courage rose. His private opinion was that Snorky
+looked like a French butcher going to a morning wedding in hired
+regalia.
+
+"The suit's a lalapazooza!" he said carefully.
+
+"It'll kill old Carrots," said Snorky, who thus referred to his sister.
+"She's over the age limit now but when I pull this she'll look a
+grandmother! Say, look me over. Make sure there are no tags or price
+marks. All right?"
+
+"Jim dandy."
+
+He went two steps to the door and turned.
+
+"Say, remember one thing. Keep your fists out of your trousers pockets,
+Bo. That's important."
+
+"Why so?"
+
+"Ignoramus," said Skippy, reproachfully. "That'll give the whole game
+away. You never stick your hands in your trousers pockets unless you're
+a greenhorn."
+
+"How do the shirt studs work?" said Skippy, nervously.
+
+"Simplest things in the world."
+
+"Say, Snorky?"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"These coat tails have got pockets in them."
+
+"Sure they have, you chump! They're to hide your mawlers in."
+
+"Don't be so bright," said Skippy indignantly. "But what _do_ we put
+into them, then?"
+
+"Handkerchief."
+
+"Rats. I know better than that. You stick a handkerchief up in front and
+pull out just the tip of it."
+
+"Perhaps it's for a toothbrush if you're staying over night."
+
+"No, but honest, what do you put in them?" said Skippy, who did not wish
+to miss a trick.
+
+They thought this over a long moment, and then gave it up as greater
+intelligences, pondering on the mysteries of existence, have given it
+up.
+
+"Well, ta-ta. See you below."
+
+"Where you goin'?"
+
+"I'm going to break in the family one by one," said Snorky, wagging his
+head. "Lettin' 'em get over the shock. I'm taking no chances."
+
+Left to himself, Skippy hastened to his own preparations. At the risk of
+being acclaimed a traitor to the sex, we must record here the truth,
+that with five mirrors surrounding him and one in the bathroom, it took
+Skippy exactly forty-five minutes to perfect his toilette from every
+angle of observation. First he burrowed into his shirt which deranged
+the part in his hair and necessitated another period of readjustment.
+Then he put on his trousers and adjusted the suspenders until each
+trouser leg hung with the crease untroubled and just clear of the boot.
+But having done this he discovered, as others have discovered, that
+patent shirt-studs sported in an unaccustomed place, require the fullest
+play of the arms. The placing of the studs was of itself the most
+delicate of operations and twice he went down on his knees and halfway
+under the bed to retrieve the upper one which popped out just as he
+thought he had it securely imprisoned. Once more he adjusted the
+suspenders, and began work on the stiff collar which caught his throat
+and forced up his chin. After five minutes' struggle he succeeded in
+fastening this with the aid of a buttonhook, and suddenly the thing he
+had feared was upon him. He had forgotten, completely forgotten, the
+white tie!
+
+What was he to do? Snorky was beyond the reach of assistance. Twice he
+had heard shouts of uproarious delight down the hall marking his chum's
+progress in breaking in the family. The house was huge and Snorky by
+this time was down on the second floor or even practicing in the parlor.
+He went through the motions of searching through his valise but he knew
+all the while that it was futile. He had forgotten the final touch, the
+_sine qua non_ of fashion!
+
+He found a wrapper in the hall closet and opening the door cautiously
+peered into the hall. An uncle and an older brother of Snorky's were on
+the same floor, but he had not been introduced and his courage failed
+him. He returned to his room and contemplated the white bed spread, the
+pillow slips and the muslin curtains in a wild hope that something might
+lend itself to an improvisation. Then he shook his head mournfully.
+There was only one way out. To appear properly dressed in this, a
+strange house, before strangers, he would have to commit a crime! The
+only way to get a white tie was to steal one. At this moment while his
+whole moral future turned on an impulse, a door down the hall opened
+and Skippy, peering forth, beheld an elderly gentleman, immaculately
+dressed, descend the stairs. For a short moment he hesitated but atavism
+and necessity were against him. He stole out into the hall and made his
+way on tiptoe. All at once he heard a step ascending the stairs. A
+bathroom door was open. He sprang into it with a thumping heart and
+waited breathlessly, leaning limply against the wall. All at once his
+eye fell on the clothes basket. From the top a crumpled white tie was
+hanging. He was saved!
+
+He seized the tie and head erect, honor intact, walked fearlessly back
+to his room. But there, a new dilemma! The tie was indeed of whitest
+lawn but, alas! across one end was a smudge which defied the most
+persistent rubbing. Skippy, as has been observed, was at the period when
+the imagination is not confined by tradition. In desperation he resorted
+to the washbasin and with the aid of a brush, triumphantly banished the
+damned spot. Then having wrung the limp mass, he spread the tie
+carefully against the window pane and covering it with a handkerchief,
+laboriously ironed it out with a shoe.
+
+Just as the clock struck half past seven, Mr. John C. Bedelle descended
+the last stairs and greeted a critical world. Beads of perspiration
+stood on his forehead, his spine seemed made of rubber, his knees shook
+and his restless, chilly hands loomed before him, homeless and lost; but
+he was safe at last in all the intricacies of a dress suit--a man of
+fashion among men of the world!
+
+Snorky was standing miserably by the fireplace, his large peppermint
+ears flanking a heated face, as he defiantly faced the family hilarity.
+Then Skippy's superb aplomb failed him. Just beyond the smirking family,
+among the early guests, was Miss Jennie Tupper, the girl with the
+velvety eyes, and at her side, as icily correct as when the night before
+she had crushed Snorky's floundering attempt at lady-killing, her sister
+Margarita.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+SHIRT STUDS AS CUPID'S MESSENGER
+
+
+AFTER the room had returned to place Skippy rallied, took the
+introductions with preternatural stiffness, and gravitated to Snorky.
+The white shirt front in the most unaccountable manner had swollen to
+alarming dimensions, the coat tails must be dragging on the floor. His
+collar cut under his imprisoned neck and his large white hands, longing
+for sheltering pockets, seemed to float before him like inflated
+balloons. If his were complete manhood,--oh for a soft shirt and a
+turned down collar!
+
+"Kill it," said Snorky under his breath.
+
+"What's wrong?"
+
+"Kill that flag of liberty, you chump!" said Snorky, glowering at the
+flaming edge of the silk bandana handkerchief which Skippy was sporting
+at his breast pocket.
+
+"What's wrong with that? Every one does it."
+
+"Wrong! Look around you."
+
+Skippy did so and surreptitiously extinguished the bandana.
+
+"Holy Mike, we're in for it," said Snorky. "Do you know who they are?"
+
+"The girls?"
+
+"Daughters of the Presbyterian minister, strict as nails--Sunday school
+and mission stuff. Oh Lord!"
+
+"Pretend you knew it all along."
+
+"And that other stuff? The dead game sporting life?"
+
+"Stick to your guns!" said Skippy desperately.
+
+The next moment he was at table, between Miss Caroline Bedelle and the
+blonde Margarita, while across the table the soft velvety eyes of Jennie
+looked at him sadly and reproachfully.
+
+"Good gracious, Jack," said Snorky's sister, staring at him. "I never,
+never would have known you. You've gained twenty pounds."
+
+"It's the shirt," thought Skippy, glancing down at the bulging front
+that gave him the torso of a wrestler. Then he began to wonder which was
+the owner of the still slightly moist tie. But soon all discomforts,
+even the intricate maze of forks and knives, were forgotten before the
+alarming problem of the shirt front. When he sat upright, stiff as a
+ramrod, it was relatively quiescent, but the moment he relaxed or bent
+forward to eat it bulged forth as though working on a spring, until a
+lurking horror that it would escape altogether began to possess him. He
+crept forward on his chair and balanced on the edge, trying to mitigate
+the conspicuous rigidity of his pose by a nonchalant coquetting with the
+salt cellar.
+
+"I suppose I must talk to you, for appearances' sake," said the blonde
+Miss Tupper.
+
+"Why so?" said Skippy haughtily, for having just reacted from blondes,
+blondes did not appeal to him.
+
+"You ask?"
+
+"Certainly I ask, and I think an apology is due my friend and myself,"
+said Skippy from his great fund of literary conversations.
+
+"Well, I like that!"
+
+"You cut us dead twice on the deck and then pretended not to know Arthur
+when he started to speak to you," said Skippy icily.
+
+Miss Margarita Tupper looked at him with the intuitive suspicion of the
+righteous.
+
+"I don't believe a word of it," she said.
+
+"_That_ is adding insult to injury," said Skippy, still in the best
+fictional manner. "Pardon me if I do not pursue this conversation any
+longer."
+
+"I guess that'll hold the old girl," he said, chuckling inwardly. But
+alas for such vanities, or was it the unseen moral guardians which may
+be expected to watch over the daughters of the upright! The sudden shift
+of his indignant body was attended with fatal results.
+
+There was a distinct "pop." The upper patent shirt-stud shot out,
+tinkled against a vase and rolled directly towards the girl with the
+velvety eyes.
+
+"What's that?" said Caroline, startled.
+
+"Some one threw a pebble against the window pane," said a voice.
+
+"Something cracked."
+
+They are wrong, eternally wrong, who look upon youth as a period of
+careless joy on the threshold of manhood's struggles and sorrows! Never
+in after-life would Skippy Bedelle experience such a blank, helpless
+horror as in that awful moment, when he sat overcome with shame and
+confusion, awaiting detection. What in heaven's name was he to say when
+the eyes of the whole company would inevitably be directed to the
+telltale stud, blazing now at the plate of Miss Tupper? What did any one
+say, anyhow, when a shirt stud popped across the table? Nothing in his
+experience or the experience of all the novelists in the world could
+supply a clue. Wave after wave of red and redder confusion rippled up
+from his collar and surged to the roots of his hair. Should he brazen it
+out? Should he make a light answer, or was it etiquette to apologize
+humbly to his hostess? How could he tell? If he were discovered there
+was only one thing to do, to run for it, to retreat to his room, lock
+his door, escape by the window and leave by the night train, disgraced
+and branded forever!
+
+"Very funny," said Mrs. Bedelle. "Caroline, look at the Bohemian glass
+vase. I'm sure I heard it crack."
+
+All glances immediately concentrated on the fatal area. Detection was
+now but a question of instants. Then Skippy in the throes of despair saw
+the plump little hand of Miss Jennie Tupper reach out and casually close
+over the offending pearl stud. He was saved, saved by the miracle of
+compassion and forgiveness that lifts women to those sublime heights
+where mere men cannot attain!
+
+Tears threatened his eyes, his throat swelled up and slowly subsided. He
+looked over into the velvety eyes and sent a message of abject
+gratitude. He was her slave from now on, irrevocably bound, faithful
+until death!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"You didn't detherve it," said Miss Jennie an hour later when in the
+seclusion of the veranda she had restored to him the unspeakable stud.
+
+"You're an angel," said Skippy hoarsely. "I'll never, never forget that.
+That was white of you, awfully white!"
+
+"You didn't detherve it," repeated Miss Tupper with as much severity as
+can accompany the slightest of lisps and the eyes of a gazelle.
+
+"Don't be hard on a fellow," said Skippy miserably.
+
+"It was outwageous. You know, you didn't know us."
+
+How was he to lie to his saviour and benefactor and yet how betray a
+chum?
+
+"It did look bad," he said, momentarily at loss, "but honest, now,
+Snorky's intentions were nothing but honorable. Honest they were."
+
+"I with I could believe it," said Miss Jennie sadly.
+
+"I say, you must think I'm an awful rum sort," said Skippy, on whom the
+velvety eyes against the distant moon ripple on the water and the nearby
+night fragrance of the honeysuckle was beginning to work its charm.
+"Well, I suppose I am--"
+
+"Oh no."
+
+"A rotten good-for-nothing lot," said Skippy gloomily, falling easily
+into the new part and surprised to find what peculiar pleasure could be
+extracted from the rôle of the wayward.
+
+"No, no, you're not that bad," said Miss Jennie earnestly, "but I do
+think--well you've not been under the withest of influenthes, have you?"
+
+"I haven't had a chance," said Skippy desperately. "Everything has been
+against me. Guess no one cares what becomes of me."
+
+"I know," said the gentle voice. "It ith hard."
+
+"Look here, Miss Tupper," said Skippy, beginning to be convinced of his
+own predestination for the gallows, as he instinctively felt the
+sentimental value of the rôle. "Men like myself don't get a chance to
+know women like you. I wish to heaven--" He stopped, a lump in his
+throat, and gazed into the sentimental night. Great heavens, what a
+depraved character he really was! For the first time he saw himself in
+the enormity of his sinning. It was not only the cigarettes and the one
+black cigar, purloined from his father, but the orgies at penny-ante,
+the occasional game of craps back of Mather's barn. Then he remembered
+other damning episodes in his black record--the time he had gone into a
+mathematics exam and read the formulas from Buster Bean's collar; the
+night he had helped Sport McGinnis smuggle a bottle of beer in for a
+welsh rabbit and swallowed a full third of the rank stuff. Then there
+was an appalling record of evasions, turnings and twistings of the exact
+and literal truth--
+
+"You can't be altogether bad if you're so honeth," said Miss Jennie, in
+whom the instinct was lively to bring the sinner home.
+
+"I am. I am," said Skippy lugubriously.
+
+"Can't I help--juth a little?"
+
+"Would you, would you really?" he said eagerly.
+
+"Let me--pleath."
+
+The plump little fingers came forth and met the rough hand of the
+sinner. Skippy squeezed them convulsively, not daring to trust his
+voice, nodded twice and smiled bravely back in the moonlight to show
+that the leaven of higher things was already beginning to work.
+
+"How'd you get on with Margarita?" he asked Snorky when they retired for
+the night.
+
+"Margarita's a pippin!" said Snorky.
+
+"I squared you all right."
+
+"You bet you did! She came right up and fed out of my hand. But, say,
+they swallowed it all right."
+
+"What?"
+
+"The dead game sporting life stuff."
+
+"Yes, I know. Got a cig?"
+
+"What? Oh yes. Get you one in a jiffy. But say. Go easy. The governor
+and all that sort of thing, you know."
+
+"Nerves sort of jumpy to-night," said Skippy languidly. "Need a few
+whiffs to quiet 'em down."
+
+It was something new in his life, a good influence. All his better
+nature rose up in response. So summoning up his courage, he lit a
+cigarette and tried to inhale--a desperate character, worthy to be
+saved, certainly ought to inhale! It was nauseating. It stung his lungs
+and set his head to reeling. He left the window and crawled over to the
+bed where he lay weak but unconquered.
+
+"By jinks, I will inhale, I'll inhale to-morrow!" he said, seeing always
+the uplifting smile and the pure velvety eyes of Miss Jennie as the room
+waltzed around him. "It's going to be awfully hard living up to her, but
+I'll do it if it kills me!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+LIVING UP TO AN ANGEL
+
+
+SKIPPY woke with a blood curdling shriek and landed sprawling in the
+middle of the floor, his legs caught in the sheets, his head smothered
+in the comforter, a convulsive grip on the bolster, which he was
+desperately trying to stifle when Snorky flung himself out of bed and
+rushed to the rescue.
+
+"Hold him back. Help Snorky! Hold him!"
+
+"Hold what, who?" said Snorky, pursuing the smothered figure of Skippy,
+who was still wrestling with the bolster. "Wake up. It's me! It's
+Snorky."
+
+Skippy's grip relaxed and presently his terror-stricken eyes emerged
+from the comforter.
+
+"Holy Maria! In another minute he'd have had me in the electric chair,"
+he said, wiping the clammy perspiration from his forehead.
+
+"Nightmare eh?"
+
+"Ugh! Gee! Moses!"
+
+"Too much cigarette."
+
+"Golly, what a life I've been leading!" said Skippy, referring to the
+dream. "Bar rooms and gambling dens, dark lanterns, hold-ups, racetracks
+and--"
+
+"Wake up, wake up!"
+
+"It's all in the dream," said Skippy sulkily. Then he remembered that
+all through the hideous phantasmagoria, in the smoky mists of low
+gambling dens, in the drizzle of midnight conclaves, across the
+sepulchral silences of leaden prisons, there had flitted the beatific
+vision of an angel with velvety eyes and the softest of lisps.
+
+"Well, go on," said Snorky.
+
+"Can't remember any more," said Skippy. Her name must be shielded at
+every cost.
+
+He had determined to be a lost character, a wayward son, a gentleman
+sport, with nerves of steel. The sentimental values appealed to his
+imagination. It gave a deep romantic tinge to the too matter-of-fact
+freckled nose and hungry mouth. Besides the end was noble and the end
+was Miss Jennie Tupper.
+
+The new rôle of course had certain exigencies. To be an interesting
+reprobate and engage Miss Jenny Tupper's sentimental proclivities for
+redemption, it was necessary to present some concrete evidence of a
+sinful life. He was shockingly deficient in all the habits that lead to
+the gallows. Desperate characters he remembered (recalling the Doctor's
+terrific sermons on the Demon Cigarettes which are the nails in the
+coffins of mothers) usually had their fingers stained with telltale
+traces of the nicotine which was gnawing at their lungs.
+
+He ensconced himself by the fireplace (out of deference to Snorky's
+estimate of the governor) and taking care not to inhale, smoked a
+cigarette to the end. But the result was unsatisfactory. He burned his
+fingers over the distasteful performance but acquired nothing in the way
+of a stain. He smoked a second and a third and then seized by an
+inspiration carefully rubbed in the moist ends.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When they walked back from the beach that morning Miss Jennie Tupper
+lost no time in opening up the fascinating subject of the sinful one's
+reclamation. Skippy had just brought forth a cigarette, tapped it
+professionally on his wrist and said:
+
+"Don't mind, do you?"
+
+"I do mind," said Miss Tupper severely. "Juth look at your hand. It ith
+thaking."
+
+Skippy extended a palsied hand with the second and third fingers
+yellowed like a Chinaman's.
+
+"It's worse this morning," he said carelessly with the sigh of one who
+contemplates stoically the approaching end.
+
+"It's tewible, tewible to let a habit make a slave of you like that! At
+your age too! How did it ever get such a dweadful hold on you?"
+
+"I began as a boy," said Skippy slowly, for he had still to work out the
+story. "You know how it is. Fast company, money in your pockets, no one
+caring. That's it, that's how it was."
+
+He raised the cigarette to his lips.
+
+"Don't smoke it, pleath."
+
+"Just one, just half a one," said Skippy with a haunted look. "My Lord,
+it's been an hour--"
+
+"Pleath for my thake, Jack."
+
+He hesitated, swallowed hard, made one or two false gestures, and flung
+away the cigarette.
+
+"If you ask it like that," he said huskily.
+
+"I'm going to athk more," said Miss Tupper with shining eyes. "I'm going
+to athk you to pwomith never to touch another thigawette or another
+card."
+
+"I can't," said Skippy. "It's gone too far, it's beyond me."
+
+"But it'll kill you, Jack," said Miss Tupper, alarm in the beautiful
+eyes.
+
+"I couldn't promise. I couldn't keep it," said Skippy, who had no
+intention of relinquishing his dramatic advantage, "but I'll make a
+fight for it. If you want me to--Jennie. If you really care?"
+
+The moon ripple and the fragrance of the honeysuckle were no longer
+about them. Miss Tupper in the calmer light of the day considered her
+words with due regard to precept and standard.
+
+"I'll be vewy glad, indeed, to help you if I can," she said properly.
+"We should alwayth help ath much ath we can, shouldn't we?"
+
+"How coldly you say it!" said Skippy indignantly.
+
+"But Jack," said Miss Tupper, alarmed at the tragic look on his face.
+"Juth think how little I know you."
+
+"You're quite right," said Skippy with magnificent generosity. "I don't
+deserve more and I had no right to say that. Well it was white of you
+even to care this much." He took off his hat and extended his hand.
+
+"What are you doing?"
+
+"The only square thing by you," said Skippy with a perfect Bret Harte
+manner. "It's been bully to know you and I'll never forget about that
+stud. Good-bye."
+
+"Do you want to make me vewy vewy unhappy?" said Miss Jennie with a
+reproachful look in the velvety eyes. Skippy returned the hat at once to
+his head.
+
+"I'll do anything, anything for you," he said huskily.
+
+Now there are two stages in the process of returning the wandering sheep
+to the fold and not the least interesting is the period of
+investigation. Miss Tupper had worked in missions with enthusiasm but
+there was something in the present case which staggered her imagination.
+How could a boy of sixteen, brought up with all the advantages of a home
+and good influences, have sunk so deeply into the mire of evil? How
+could one be so depraved and yet look at you with such an open, winning
+smile? Was he inherently bad or just weak, just reaching out blindly for
+some good influence to set him right?
+
+"If I can help you," she said, leading the way to a little summer house
+on the parsonage and shuddering as she glanced down at the nicotine
+stained fingers, "and I do want to help you--I'm several years older
+than you are--you muth tell me evewything."
+
+"I will, I want to," said Skippy, summoning up all the powers of his
+imagination.
+
+"You know," said Miss Tupper, a little embarrassed, "I heard, I couldn't
+help hearing all you thaid that night on the boat."
+
+"You did. . . . Good heavens!"
+
+"Perhaps you don't want to tell me."
+
+"I might as well make a clean breast of it," said Skippy, wondering
+where the exigencies of the situation would lead him.
+
+"I'm afwaid Jack," said Miss Tupper sympathetically, "that your fwiend
+Arthur Gween ith not a vewy good influenth for you."
+
+"Snorky?" said Skippy momentarily surprised.
+
+"He theems to have vewy low athothiations," said Miss Tupper earnestly.
+
+"You mean racing and jockeys and all that sort of stuff?" said Skippy,
+willing to follow the line of least resistance for a while. "Oh, Arthur
+isn't half bad."
+
+"I don't think you thee him ath he weally ith," said Miss Tupper firmly.
+"No I don't think he ith at all the pwoper perthon for you to be with."
+
+"Couldn't I help him?" said Skippy craftily. "We should always try to
+help, shouldn't we?"
+
+"You would have to be vewy vewy stwong for that, wouldn't you?"
+
+"Yes, of course," said Skippy, with his mind on the delicate arch of
+Miss Tupper's little foot.
+
+Miss Tupper, who was expectantly set for an interesting confession, was
+somewhat disappointed at the lengthy delay.
+
+"I'm afwaid your pawenth gave you too much money," she said finally. "It
+ith tho often that, ithn't it?"
+
+There were some things that were too much even for Skippy's imagination.
+In the present case it absolutely refused to follow such a lead.
+
+"No, it wasn't that," he said slowly. After all it is only the first one
+hundred thousand lies that are difficult. Skippy's hesitation was brief.
+He remembered the episode of the fictitious Tina Tanner that had so
+often served him in delicate moments.
+
+"I almost made a wreck of my life," he began, frowning terrifically.
+
+"Tell me," said Miss Tupper eagerly.
+
+"She wasn't a bad sort; only,--well stage life is different."
+
+"Stage life! You mean--"
+
+"She was an actress," said Skippy nodding.
+
+"But how--"
+
+"I ran away from home. They never understood me. Family fight. Swore I'd
+never set foot in the old house again. Cut for the West. You get to see
+a rough side of life like that you know, mining camps, mule drivers,
+lumber men. Good sorts," he added reflectively, "but wild, very wild.
+You couldn't understand."
+
+"But your father and mother?" said Miss Tupper, wide-eyed and thoroughly
+thrilled.
+
+"I'd rather not say anything against them," said Skippy magnanimously.
+
+"Poor boy!"
+
+"I've kept pretty straight considering," said Skippy, who did not wish
+to paint the picture too black.
+
+"And the girl?" said Miss Tupper, who could not restrain a perfectly
+feminine curiosity.
+
+"Tina? She wanted me to go on the stage with her," said Skippy, who had
+now told the story a sufficient number of times to begin to believe in
+it. "It was touch and go. Well, I didn't. That's all."
+
+"What a dweadful thide of life you've theen," said Miss Tupper,
+appalled. "At your age, too!"
+
+"I say, I never expected to tell any one this."
+
+"But aren't you glad you did? Don't you feel better now that you've
+told the twuth!" said Miss Tupper enthusiastically.
+
+Skippy thought this over and acknowledged finally that confession was a
+relief.
+
+"Now pwomise never, never to gamble, smoke, or dwink. Pwomise, Jack. You
+don't know how much better you'll feel."
+
+"I'm not strong on signing pledges and that sort of thing," said Skippy
+cautiously.
+
+"Oh no, juth pwomise."
+
+"For how long?"
+
+"Until you're twenty-one."
+
+"I think it's better to promise what you're sure you can carry out,
+don't you? It has a better effect," said Skippy craftily. "Tell you what
+I'll do. I'll make a promise for a year. Only there's one thing."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"I'll promise to try and cut out the smoking, but it will have to be
+little by little."
+
+"Jack!"
+
+"My nerves won't stand it," said Skippy, bringing forth the
+nicotine-splotched hand. "I'll do my best. I will, I'll do it for you.
+I'll cut down to a box a day."
+
+"A box?"
+
+"Ten cigarettes, only ten, but I must have ten," said Skippy hungrily.
+"But Jennie, you'll have to help a lot."
+
+"You'll pwomise then?"
+
+"I pwomise," said Skippy, falling into the lisp.
+
+He extended his hand and profiting by the solemnity of the moment held
+it with the softest and gentlest of thrills, while he said slowly:
+
+"Ten cigarettes a day. No more. That's my solemn promise."
+
+"But the gambling?" said Miss Jennie, disengaging her hand.
+
+"That's another promise," said Skippy, taking her hand again. "I promise
+for the space of one year, never to sit in a game of poker for money,
+never to shoot craps with Tacks Brooker or Happy Mather. . . ."
+
+"Ith thith nethethawy?" said Miss Tupper blushing and seeking to free
+her hand from the not too painful embrace.
+
+"I want to be sure of everything," said Skippy retaining tight hold.
+"Never to frequent race tracks, that's a promise too, or to bet on the
+ponies, or to go into pool rooms."
+
+"That's quite enough," said Miss Tupper, glancing nervously up towards
+the veranda.
+
+"But I haven't promised to give up drinking and all that sort of thing,"
+said Skippy enthusiastically.
+
+Miss Tupper, in whom a slight suspicion was beginning to grow as to the
+exact motives back of the sudden conversion, hesitated, but finally put
+forth her hand a third time.
+
+"I promise," said Skippy, drawing a deep breath and sailing away on
+perfumed clouds to an invisible choir. "I want to make this something
+terrific; it's the most important you know. I promise for the space of
+one year,--so long as you care enough to answer my letters, that's only
+fair you know--I promise never to touch a drop of beer or ale, or
+whiskey, or rum, or brandy, or sherry, or port, or . . ."
+
+"Alcohol in any form," said Miss Tupper, the color of the rambler.
+
+"In any form. So help me God," said Skippy slowly.
+
+"There," said Miss Tupper, somewhat thrilled herself. "And now don't you
+feel better, much, much better for having done it?"
+
+And Skippy answered truthfully,
+
+"You bet I feel better."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Skippy, indeed, would have sworn to anything just for the look that
+lighted up the velvety eyes in the joy of salvation. It is doubtful if
+he even heard half of the program of his future existence. There was
+something irresistible in the softness of her eyes and the fascinating
+lisp. He was face to face at last with a good influence. He had met, not
+the type of girl that men play with lightly or madly for a month or a
+day, but a woman, the kind rough coarse men look up to as to a polar
+star, the kind of woman you think of winning after years of struggle,
+that keeps men straight and their thoughts on higher things, the kind of
+woman that pulls a drunkard out of the gutter, reclaims him and makes a
+genius out of the wreck. He would be saved by her, he was bound he
+would--no matter what sacrifices he would have to make to keep in proper
+sinful condition.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+SUDDEN INTEREST IN THE BIBLE
+
+
+SNORKY GREEN had experienced so many shocks in his intimate contact with
+his chum's imagination that he had come to believe the future could hold
+no surprises for him. But that evening Skippy after a long searching
+through bookcases said with a worried air:
+
+"I say, Snorky, where do you keep the Bible?"
+
+"The--the Bible?" said Snorky faintly.
+
+"Sure, the Bible."
+
+Snorky's first thought was that Skippy must be the victim of a secret
+malady and ready to make his will. His next was even more alarming.
+
+"You're not thinking of anything rash, are you, old horse?"
+
+"What the deuce?"
+
+"You and Jennie?"
+
+"What the Sam Blazes are you driving at?"
+
+"Thought you were looking up the marriage service," said Snorky
+facetiously.
+
+"Shucks, no. Nothing of the sort. I just, I just want to look up a
+reference."
+
+"What reference?"
+
+"It's of a personal nature, very personal," said Skippy.
+
+At the end of an hour's search Snorky finally produced a Bible from the
+cook and watched Skippy turn through the pages in a perplexed manner.
+
+"I've watched that coot do some queer things," he thought, scratching
+his ear, "but I'll be jiggswiggered if I can figure out what he's up to
+now."
+
+At the end of half an hour Skippy looked up nonplussed.
+
+"What do you know about the Bible, anyhow?"
+
+"I know a lot," said Snorky astutely.
+
+"Where do you get the ten commandments, anyhow?"
+
+Snorky repeated the question, more and more perplexed.
+
+"Why it's in Genesis isn't it?"
+
+"Naw, I looked all through that."
+
+"How about Solomon? He was wise to everything."
+
+"Who was the guy who went up to Heaven? Perhaps he got 'em."
+
+"Let's ask the cook."
+
+Which was done.
+
+"Now what in the Sam Hill has Skippy to do with the ten commandments or
+the ten commandments with Skippy?" said Snorky, observing the
+extraordinary concentration on his chum's face as he considered them
+carefully one by one. "Perhaps the heat has hit him and he's going in
+for religion."
+
+The explanation of Skippy's eccentric taste was a perfectly simple one.
+No sooner had he departed from the lovely presence of Miss Jennie Tupper
+with only the vaguest idea of what he had pledged himself not to do, but
+with the liveliest and most disturbing memory of the softest of hands,
+than he had bitterly repented the prodigal manner in which he had thrown
+away his opportunities.
+
+"Why the deuce didn't I save something out," he said to himself angrily,
+with a sudden recollection of moonlight nights to come. "My aunt's cat's
+pants, but I certainly went to sleep."
+
+From the parsonage to the Greens', from the soup to the watermelon, but
+one idea obsessed him: how was he to find something else to swear off?
+For instinct, which supplants reason in such sentimental voyages, warned
+him that to such a professional reformer as Miss Jennie Tupper his sole
+fascination lay in a lively display of original sin.
+
+The more he thought it over the more depressed he had become. The truth
+was that he had outrageously neglected his opportunities and had little
+to offer. All he could do was to fall back on his imagination and such
+knowledge of the world as returned to him from an extensive preparation
+in modern fiction. The trouble with his imagination was it worked too
+spontaneously. How much better he could have done with a little more
+preparation!
+
+"Gee, I never knew a hand could give you such a fuzzy feeling," he said
+with a heavy sigh.
+
+It was then that he had thought of the Bible and the ten commandments
+with much resulting perplexity to Snorky.
+
+"Well, I'll be eternally dog-switched," he said all at once. "I never
+would have believed it!"
+
+"Believed what?" said Snorky, who was waiting patiently.
+
+"Say, these are the ten commandments, aren't they?"
+
+"Sure they are!"
+
+"Genuine, bona-fide, patent applied for, no imitations, only original
+ten commandments?"
+
+"Keerect."
+
+"Well do you know there isn't a thing in them about cigarettes, or booze
+or penny-ante. Not a word!"
+
+"Honest?"
+
+"Read 'em yourself," said Skippy indignantly. "It's all about being nice
+to your neighbor and sitting still on Sunday."
+
+"No!"
+
+"Fact!" said Skippy, whose real irritation was caused by the fact that
+the ten commandments did not afford him any suggestion in his new
+predicament.
+
+Suddenly Snorky slapped his shoulder with a resounding whack.
+
+"I'm on."
+
+"Ouch! On to what?"
+
+"Own up! I'm in the same box too," said Snorky with a smirk.
+
+"You mean?"
+
+"Sure, Margarita's trying the reform racket on me too!"
+
+"Oh, she is?" said Skippy, who did not like sharing the honors of a
+stellar rôle.
+
+"Yep, and you must have been laying it on strong for Margarita's been
+asking all sorts of questions about you."
+
+"Snorky, go the limit--make it strong and stronger," said Skippy,
+brightening up.
+
+"Honest?"
+
+"The limit!"
+
+"I get you."
+
+Skippy took a few steps towards the door and reflected.
+
+"When I say the limit--" he said doubtfully.
+
+"Leave it to me."
+
+"There are some things though."
+
+"Don't worry--trust me."
+
+"Well, however, I say,--don't get rash."
+
+"Keep on trusting me," said Snorky with an airy wave of his hand.
+
+Something in the repetition struck Skippy where he was the weakest, in
+that wholesouled faith which should sanctify the friendship of a
+lifetime. The more he considered it the less he liked it.
+
+"I have made a mistake," he said frowning. "Snorky has no sense of
+discretion."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+THE WAY OF THE TRANSGRESSOR
+
+
+MISS JENNIE TUPPER at the end of a week acknowledged to herself with an
+uneasy sense of her own shortcomings that the task of keeping Mr. Skippy
+Bedelle in the straight and narrow path was one beyond her limited
+experience. It was not that she had lost confidence in her own
+efficiency, but that she anxiously asked herself if she could afford the
+time and the effort. Skippy was all for the better life and yielded at
+once to her suggestions. The trouble was in his staying put, as it is
+colloquially expressed. Each evening the cure was complete, but each
+morning the conversation had to begin all over. The hold that his past
+life had taken upon him was simply staggering and the hankering for the
+excitement of the gambling table or the struggle against the narcotic
+tyranny of the demon cigarette was such that at times she had to sit
+long moments holding his storm-racked and shaking hand while he fought
+bravely against the maddening appetite! And after a week of the closest
+personal attention he had only cut down the allowance of cigarettes to
+seven a day!
+
+Now Miss Tupper was upright and God-fearing and self-respecting, and
+though there was a difference of three years all in her favor, she,
+unlike some of her sex, scorned the use of her personal attractions,
+simply for the sake of a personal vanity, nor was she a collector of
+male scalps. She was in a moral quandary of the most metaphysical
+complexity. What should she do: shirk her evident moral responsibility
+and allow a bravely battling human soul to sink into iniquity or
+continue and permit a most susceptible youngster to immerse himself
+deeper and deeper into a hopeless passion?
+
+Each day she came to the task of regenerating Mr. Skippy Bedelle
+resolved to conduct the proceedings on the grounds of the strictest
+formality, and each evening she admitted to herself the failure. Yet
+could she honestly blame herself? She gave him her female sewing-society
+pin to wear not as a personal token but solely as a daily reminder of
+the promises he had made to himself. She gave him a tie, a colored
+handkerchief and the sweater she had just finished for another
+destination. But each was given as a reward and marked a triumphant
+progress in his fight to acquire a final mastery over himself. When,
+however, Skippy brought up the question of a photograph, a crisis was
+reached.
+
+"I have never never given my picture to any man," she said firmly, and
+the absence of sibilants made it doubly impressive. "And I never never
+will. Bethideth, you know I would have to tell my mother."
+
+They were sitting in the summer house at that romantic hour when the
+first day stars arrive with the mosquitoes. It was always at such
+moments that the craving was strongest. She had begun by holding his
+wrist in a strong encircling clasp but the sight of his twitching
+contorted fingers had been too much for her sensibilities and her hand
+had slipped into a more intimate clasp.
+
+"After all he's only a boy," she had said to herself.
+
+"Jennie! how can you--don't you--do you realize all I'm doing--just for
+you?" said Skippy, whose voice at such moments was not under control.
+
+"No, no, you ought to do it for yourself, becauth it ith the right thing
+to do, becauth it will make you feel stwonger and finer."
+
+"Nope, it's you or nothing."
+
+"Jack, you muthn't thay thuch thingth. I muthn't let you!"
+
+"It is the first time I've ever cared what became of me," said Skippy
+lugubriously. "You don't know what that pin means to me."
+
+"But--"
+
+"Do you realize what I'm going back to? Old associations, old habits and
+a long, long, fight! And then there's Snorky. I've got to save him
+too."
+
+"But Jack--"
+
+"I'm not asking for anything more than just your picture, nothing
+more,--nothing that commits you to anything! But I do want that, I must
+have that! I want to rise up every morning and remember and, and I want
+to come back every night and know that I can face your eyes," said
+Skippy warming up. "I say it must be a full face, not a profile, you
+know."
+
+"I haven't thaid I would," said Miss Jennie in dreadful perplexity.
+
+"But you will."
+
+There was a long silence.
+
+"You will, won't you!"
+
+"I--I will think it over," said Miss Tupper finally, remembering the
+terrific report which her sister had brought her via Snorky Green. "I
+will give you my dethition after thupper."
+
+That evening, Skippy, excusing himself from Snorky, who was taking
+Margarita to a lecture on the fauna and flora of Yucatan, set out for
+the parsonage with a thumping heart. If the truth be told he was not
+altogether convinced of the durability of his attraction for Miss
+Jennie, but he was quite certain of one thing, if there was even a
+sporting chance of Snorky's adding the blonde sister to his photographic
+gallery in the communal room in the Kennedy House, he could never
+confess failure! The state of his own emotion perplexed him. When he was
+away, he could look on with a certain amused calm as though the whole
+thing were but a fascinating game. Indeed, at times he felt gorgeously,
+terrifically guilty, the gayest and blackest of black Lotharios. Yet no
+sooner had he looked into the soft velvety eyes and felt the touch of
+her warm fingers than he was certain, absolutely certain that his life's
+decision had been made, that he wanted to stand forth as a man of the
+strongest character, and slowly and patiently struggle upward to those
+heights where serenely she would wait for him.
+
+He consumed three cigarettes--rapidly and faithfully, to make up the
+seven of the daily quota, mutually agreed upon; flicked the dust off his
+shoes with his handkerchief, tightened his belt and his tie, and, having
+fanned himself with his hat, found at last the courage to tread the
+noisy gravel and ring the bell. On his way he had built up a dozen
+eloquent conversations, but all memory of things tender and convincing
+were forgotten as he ventured over the slippery floor of the parlor and
+beheld at the side of Jennie a large blown-up, thin-haired male visitor
+in ecclesiastical black, who was introduced to him as the Rev. Percy
+Tuptale.
+
+Intuition is a strange thing that fortunately returns to lovers,
+drunkards and children in their hour of need. From the first touch of
+her hand and the first look into her face Skippy knew that a crisis had
+arrived. Mr. Tuptale was so placidly and professionally at ease and
+Miss Tupper so nervously and unsibilantly conversational that the
+conversation bubbled on like a kettle steaming in a distant room. He
+nodded once or twice, Mr. Tuptale fingered a magazine while Jennie ran
+on softening the s's.
+
+"Something awful is going to happen," thought Skippy, staring at the
+biblical engravings on the wall. "They're going to try to make me give
+back that pin."
+
+Miss Tupper stood up. Skippy stood up. Mr. Tuptale stood up.
+
+"Jack, I have taken a therious, a vewy therious thep," said Miss Tupper
+flushing. "I do want to help you tho much but, but I have thought, that
+ith, I am afwaid I know tho little how. You may think it dweadful of
+me--"
+
+She paused and Skippy frozen to the marrow said icily,
+
+"Yes, what is it?"
+
+"I have gone to Mr. Tuptale--to Perthy for advithe. I, I had to."
+
+"Excuse me," said Skippy loftily. "Is Mr. Tuptale, are you,--is he?"
+
+"Well, yeth," said Jennie, blushing, while a smile spread enormously
+over Mr. Tuptale's features.
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"You thee that ith why," said Jennie hastily, "and, oh Jack, I do want
+you to talk to him, juth ath you talked to me. Tell him evwything. He
+ith tho helpful and tho underthanding."
+
+She swayed from one foot to another and glanced from the boy to the man,
+undecided.
+
+"Jennie, dear," said Mr. Tuptale with surgical ease, "I think
+ahem--suppose you let us talk this over together. It would be easier,
+wouldn't it?"
+
+"Oh yeth, indeed!"
+
+The next moment they were alone.
+
+"And now my boy," said Mr. Tuptale blandly. "Come, sit down. Let's have
+it out like man to man."
+
+Skippy did not at once comply. He walked slowly around the red plush
+rocker and then back to the bamboo fire-screen and rested his elbows
+lightly upon it and glowered at the all-unconscious curate, murder in
+his heart.
+
+"Jennie is very fond of you, Jack," said Mr. Tuptale, caging his
+fingers. "She has a warm and sympathetic nature, a big heart, and I can
+quite understand how deeply concerned she is in the brave fight you are
+making. I want you to accept me as a friend, a real friend. I know men
+and I know what temptations are, early associations, acquired habits.
+Jack, my boy, there is nothing really wrong in you. I saw that the
+moment you came into the room."
+
+"Who said there was--pray?" said Skippy, whose hands were trembling with
+rage.
+
+Mr. Tuptale looked up quickly, frowned and said:
+
+"Jennie has told me all--naturally."
+
+"She told you I gambled."
+
+"She did."
+
+"She told you I drank, and she told you I smoked."
+
+"She did, of course, and I consider it was her duty to do so."
+
+"Well is there anything wrong in that, I ask you?"
+
+"Anything wrong in gambling, drunkenness, steeping oneself with tobacco
+until your hand shakes like a leaf?" said Mr. Tuptale, rising.
+
+"Exactly. Do you know your ten commandments, sir?"
+
+"Are you insulting me, sir?" said the curate, yielding to a perfectly
+natural irritation.
+
+"Kindly point out to me in the ten commandments where any habit of mine
+is forbidden," said Skippy with the most impressive of declamatory
+attitudes.
+
+Mr. Tuptale's jaw dropped, twice he tried to answer and twice remained
+inarticulate.
+
+Skippy possessed himself of his hat and bowed in scorn.
+
+"You will kindly restore to Miss Tupper this pin," he said, producing it
+after a struggle with his tie. "Also inform her that I shall immediately
+send back to her other articles I need not now specify. Thank you for
+your interest in my case but it is quite unnecessary--quite. I can stand
+by the ten commandments. Good night."
+
+He went down the scrunching gravel and slammed the gate.
+
+"And there is more, sir," he exclaimed aloud, forgetting that he was now
+alone. "One thing more. You can tell Miss Tupper that even among the
+lowest of my associates, gamblers and drunkards and race-track sharks
+though they be, a promise given is sacred, sacred, sir, and the man who
+breaks it is, is, is--"
+
+But here rage quite overtook him and he picked up a stone and flung it
+at an inoffensive tree.
+
+"It's all Snorky!" he said in the swift progress of moods. "I knew he'd
+overdo it! Holy Mike, what in Sam Hill did he tell Margarita! He must
+have--he--" But again imagination failed him and he proceeded on his
+way, fists sunk in his pockets, sliding along gloomy lanes.
+
+"And I believed I had met a good woman!" he said bitterly. "Faugh,
+they're all alike. Well, I don't care what does become of me. Serve her
+right if I went plump to the bad. And by jingo, I'll do it too!"
+
+Whereupon, having resolved upon a life of crime, he plunged his hand
+into his pocket and cast from him the now unnecessary cigarettes!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+THE SCALP HUNTER
+
+
+SKIPPY in his sentimental progress had now reached the point where if he
+could not control the impulses of his sentiments he could at least
+review the past with some instructive profit.
+
+"Girls are queer things, aren't they?" he said ruminatively to Snorky
+Green, for the mood of confidence was on him.
+
+"Queerer and queerier," said Snorky, considering the bosom of last
+night's dress shirt with a view to future service.
+
+"They get you before you know it and as soon as they get you they worry
+the life out of you. One way or the other they start to making you
+miserable just as soon as you show them you've fallen for them. Now
+why?"
+
+"Woman has no sense of gratitude," said Snorky, who had heard the phrase
+from a brother who had suffered.
+
+"And you can't be friends with them--well you know, just friends."
+
+"I know," said Snorky heavily.
+
+"What gets me," said Skippy, "is why we fall and fall and fall."
+
+"Habit."
+
+"Well, perhaps."
+
+"Sure, habit, that's all."
+
+"But this is the queerest of all," said Skippy, yawning and stretching
+his arms deliciously. "How darned fine you feel when it's all over. You
+go to bed thinking the bottom's been kicked out of things and you wake
+up feeling so Jim dandy rip-roarin' chuck full of happiness that you
+wonder what's happened, and then you remember that you're cured! Your
+time's your own. You can wear, do and say what you like, spend your
+money on yourself. You're free! Now it is queer, isn't it?"
+
+"Like having a tooth out?" said Snorky.
+
+"Exactly."
+
+"Say, what story did you cook up about me to Margarita Tupper?" said
+Skippy, tying the white cravat for the sixth time.
+
+"Bygones is bygones," said Snorky evasively.
+
+"You must have had me robbin' a coach or skinning a cat," said Skippy
+encouragingly.
+
+"You were throwing yourself away there, old top," said Snorky, avoiding
+the direct answer. "Why in another week you'd a been reading little
+Rollo and taking to crocheting--a girl who lisps like that, too!
+Whatever was eating you, anyhow?"
+
+"She talked like a shower bath," said Skippy unfeelingly, "but her eyes
+were lovely. Well, that's over."
+
+"What's the use? You'll fall again."
+
+"Never," said Skippy firmly. Then he qualified it. "That is, not in the
+same way."
+
+"There ain't no two ways."
+
+"Sure there is. It's like swimming. You can dive in or you can sit on
+the bank and splash with your toes--Savvy?"
+
+"Ha! ha!"
+
+"Wait and see. I know a thing or two."
+
+Twenty minutes later, having assumed the full glories of evening dress
+(with studs of the good old-fashioned style that remained anchored),
+they departed for dinner at the Balous across the way.
+
+"Say, put me on," said Skippy, who like all artists of the imagination
+was seized with an uncontrollable nervousness before facing an audience.
+"Who's in the party?"
+
+"Only Charlie and Vivi."
+
+"Vivi?"
+
+"Real name's Violet but she's dressed it up."
+
+"What's she like? What's her line?"
+
+"Stiff as a ramrod--prim as an old maid, conversation strictly
+educational."
+
+"Well, what does she look like?"
+
+"Flabby as a cart-horse."
+
+"Say, what the devil--"
+
+"Grub's o.k. and there'll be fun after," said Snorky by way of
+justification.
+
+"How's the old folks?"
+
+"Mr. Balou? He's a terror, gives you the willies. If he doesn't freeze
+you the old girl will."
+
+Skippy's traditional scepticism of any statement with the Snorky stamp
+would have warned him at any other time. But this being in a way a new
+experience in strange waters, his nervousness got the better of him.
+Halfway up the driveway he plucked Snorky's sleeve.
+
+"Listen."
+
+"Let go me arm you chump."
+
+"What do you say to them?"
+
+"Say to whom?"
+
+"Mr. and Mrs."
+
+"Talk about the weather, you ignoramus."
+
+"Sure I know that, but afterwards, at dinner, what do you talk about
+there?"
+
+"Don't worry, that's what girls are for."
+
+Despite which advice, Skippy nervously ran over his conversational
+ammunition. There was of course Maude Adams to begin with. He tried hard
+to think of some book he had read--some work of sufficient dullness to
+serve up to this blue stocking atmosphere.
+
+"Stop shootin' your cuff," said Snorky, applying his finger to the bell.
+"Don't you know anything about society?"
+
+"Who's nervous?" said Skippy indignantly.
+
+His backbone stiffened to the consistency of the white manacle that
+imprisoned his throat, he brushed the slight powder of the dust from the
+shining patent leathers, which in the fashion of the day extended in
+long pointed toes, shot back his cuffs for the twentieth time, felt
+surreptitiously to assure himself that his part was functioning properly
+and slid behind Snorky Green as he entered the parlor.
+
+Something that was neither prim nor stiff nor in the least resembled a
+cart-horse bore down on them with a swish of ruffled skirts.
+
+"Hello, Arthur, how nice of you to come. Dad and Mumsy are out so we're
+all to ourselves," said Miss Vivi Balou. "Mr. Bedelle? Oh I've heard a
+lot about _you_!"
+
+"Really now, what do you mean?" said Skippy, with a long breath of
+relief.
+
+Miss Balou held his hand just an extra minute as she said this, looking
+up into his face with an expression of the greatest interest. She was
+just over five feet, of the dreaded species of brunettes, with a thin,
+upward pointing little nose and the brightest of eyes.
+
+"Oh I know a terrible lot," she said, giving to her mischievous glance
+just the slightest, most complimentary shade of apprehension.
+
+Mr. Skippy Bedelle grew two inches toward the ceiling and looked for a
+mirror.
+
+Two strictly plain young ladies, roommates of Miss Balou's from
+Farmington, with large black sash bows in their hair, were introduced as
+Miss Barrons and Miss Cantillon.
+
+"Elsa Barrons is perfectly wonderful with the dumb-bells, look at her
+forearm, and Fanny isn't good looking but awfully clever," said Miss
+Balou in a whisper which was already confidential.
+
+Brother Charles now sauntered in and shook hands with the magnificent
+condescension of a sophomore.
+
+"Have a cigarette before dinner?"
+
+He flashed a silver case and tendered it to Snorky, who being
+unprepared, hesitated, and took one.
+
+"Cigarette?"
+
+"Love to but I'm in training," said Skippy.
+
+Charles, having arrived at the age when everything should weigh heavily
+upon a sophisticated appetite, bored with his sister, bored with
+sister's plain looking friends and bored with sister's beaux, retired to
+the fireplace, where he draped himself on the mantelpiece and looked
+properly bored with himself, an illusion of greatness which was
+peculiarly impressive to tadpole imaginations.
+
+The arduities of the opening conversation were fortunately interrupted
+by the announcement of dinner and Skippy, with Maude Adams in reserve,
+found himself at table between Miss Balou and the swinger of dumb-bells.
+
+"You're a Princeton man?" said Miss Barrons after several long breaths.
+
+Skippy apportioned the compliment to his manly air and the magnificent
+lines of the dress suit.
+
+"No, I'm Yale. That is I'm preparing," he said carelessly, and hoping
+that Snorky wasn't listening he added: "Family didn't want me to go in
+too young, you know."
+
+"Oh yes, I know," said Miss Barrons with an appreciative glance at his
+precocious brow. "I think that's much better too. You don't have half as
+good a time if you go to college too young."
+
+"Eighteen's about right," said Skippy in a more mature manner.
+
+The subject being exhausted Skippy counted up the forks while his
+companion, to appear at ease, asked for the salt to put in her soup.
+
+"Do you know Jim Fisher?" she said suddenly. "He's going to Yale next
+year."
+
+Skippy did not know Jim Fisher.
+
+"I wonder if you know a perfectly dandy girl?"
+
+"Who's that?"
+
+"Alice Parks."
+
+Skippy did not know Alice Parks, though she lived in New York City.
+Likewise with a growing feeling of his profound social ignorance, he
+successively admitted that he did not know Cornelia Baxter, Frances
+Bowen or Harry Fall. Whereupon Miss Barrons abandoned him to converse
+with Charles who did know Alice Parks who was so attractive and Harry
+Fall who had such a strong character.
+
+"What the devil is there to talk about," said Skippy to himself as he
+fidgeted with the soup. "What an awful bore society is."
+
+There was Maude Adams, but how was he to get to her?
+
+"I'm just crazy about harps," said Miss Cantillon, who was clever. "I
+think they're wonderful."
+
+"Harps--oh yes," said Charles Balou.
+
+Miss Cantillon appealed to the table.
+
+"Do you like them better than violins?" said Miss Barrons doubtfully.
+
+"Oh much better!"
+
+"They're too big," said Snorky wisely.
+
+"Yes, that is the trouble. It's a perfect shame too. They are too big to
+carry round but they are so melodious. I don't like the piano--it's so
+cold--"
+
+While the conversation raged on the proper classification of musical
+instruments, Miss Balou turned from Snorky to Skippy and looked him once
+more in the eyes with her interested glance.
+
+"Yes, I've heard a lot about you," she said with a knowing look.
+
+"Really now?"
+
+"You're a perfectly ghastly flirt," she said, lowering her voice. "You
+give a girl a terrific rush for a week or two and then pop off without
+even saying good-bye. Never mind though. I'm warned."
+
+Again the look, the interested look of trying to discover the secret of
+his fascination. It was quite unlike the way any other girl had ever
+looked at him. Other girls looked at you side-wise or averted their eyes
+when they met yours. But this was different. It was mocking,
+impertinent, insinuating, but it did not displease him. He saw that he
+had made an impression, an instantaneous impression. He mystified her
+perhaps but he interested her intensely. For the first time he had
+conquered with a look.
+
+"Who told you?"
+
+"That's telling."
+
+"I'll bet I know."
+
+"Bet you don't."
+
+"Bet I do."
+
+"What'll you bet?"
+
+"Two pounds of chocolates against a necktie."
+
+"Done, who is it?"
+
+"Some one here."
+
+"Nope. You've lost."
+
+"Who then?"
+
+"Some one who knows Dolly Travers," said Vivi with a mocking smile.
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"Brute," said Vivi in the greatest admiration.
+
+"Really I--"
+
+"Now don't be modest--I hate modest men. It makes it twice as bad. She's
+very attractive, isn't she?"
+
+"Very," said Skippy, feeling every inch a man.
+
+"But she's rather young--for you, isn't she?" said Vivi artfully.
+
+"They put glasses on cows in Russia," said Miss Cantillon importantly.
+She had a reputation as a brilliant conversationalist to uphold.
+
+This assertion woke up the table.
+
+"Cows?"
+
+"Glasses?"
+
+"Fanny dear, how excruciating!"
+
+Even the sophomore was surprised into expressing his incredulity.
+
+"Colored glasses on account of the glare of the snow," said Miss
+Cantillon.
+
+"Fanny!"
+
+"Fact, in Siberia. I read it in the papers."
+
+"Cows can't live in the snow."
+
+"But Siberia isn't all snow."
+
+"Most of it is."
+
+"Isn't it wonderful the things she knows?" said Vivi admiringly. "Do you
+like brainy women?"
+
+"That depends," said Skippy while he stopped to consider. "I don't know
+any."
+
+"Oh what a dreadful cynical remark!" said Vivi with another admiring
+look. "Heavens, I shall be frightened to death what I say to you. I'm
+sure you're awfully clever yourself. Perhaps I'll have a chance. Clever
+men hate clever women, don't they?"
+
+"There is certainly something about my particular style of beauty that's
+bowled her over," thought Skippy to himself.
+
+"Oh I don't know," he said, fatuously unconscious of the virtues he
+conceded to himself. "Dolly Travers was quite clever, you know."
+
+"Brute!" said Miss Balou for the second time.
+
+"Oh come now--"
+
+"Do you know what I think about you?"
+
+"What do you think?"
+
+"I think you'd be lots of excitement at a house party," said Miss Vivi,
+shaking her head. "Just for a few days. I think you'd give a girl the
+grandest sort of a rush, but as for believing a word you said--never!"
+
+"What do you mean?" said Skippy, immensely puffed up.
+
+"It shows in your eyes," said Vivi with a look of having at last
+deciphered the mystery. "Besides, girls have spoiled you. You have had
+things too easily. No wonder you're conceited."
+
+Miss Cantillon was discoursing brilliantly on a crow that had been
+struck by lightning in Oklahoma and had fallen into a wheat field and
+set fire to the grain, which had precipitated a conflagration which had
+necessitated calling out the fire departments of two counties.
+
+"You're offended now," said Vivi in a contrite whisper.
+
+"Some one's given you an awfully bad opinion of me," said Skippy
+stiffly, frowning to show the displeasure he did not feel.
+
+"Well it's true, isn't it?"
+
+"It is not!"
+
+"How about Jennie Tupper?"
+
+"Oh that!" said Skippy burying the memory with a wave of his hand.
+
+"You see you _are_ a brute! Well I don't mind. I like your hands."
+
+Skippy took a precautionary glance at the ends of his baseball fingers
+and then allowed them to come to rest on the tablecloth.
+
+"Now you're trying to jolly me," he said astutely.
+
+"No. I always notice hands the first thing. They tell so much about your
+character. I saw yours at once."
+
+"You can read hands?" said Skippy, who knew this much of the etiquette
+of the game.
+
+"Yes, but not now," said Vivi in a promissory tone.
+
+Skippy's attitude towards social functions underwent a change of front.
+He began to feel confidently, vaingloriously at ease. He joined in the
+general conversation determined to rout the brilliant Miss Cantillon,
+who knew so many things. Now the rule for such preëminence is simple and
+some acquire it by cunning and others by instinct. Deny the obvious.
+Reputations have fattened on nothing else. When inevitably the moment
+arrived to discuss Maude Adams, and her latest play, Skippy announced
+that he did not like Maude Adams.
+
+"Not like Maude Adams!"
+
+There was a sudden silence and all eyes were turned expectantly toward
+him as to a manifestly superior intelligence. Finally the swinger of
+dumb-bells voiced the question.
+
+"But why?"
+
+Skippy considered.
+
+"Too much like Maude Adams," he said cryptically.
+
+Vivi looked at him in admiration.
+
+"How clever, I never thought of that."
+
+"Well, I'm just frantic about Maude Adams!" said the athletic Miss
+Barrons stubbornly.
+
+"Because you like Maude Adams," said Skippy as a clincher.
+
+By one bold stroke he had become a personage and what is more perceived
+that he had become one. Different topics were served up for his
+judgment. He pronounced flatly against colleges for women, woman
+suffrage and bobbed hair, predicted the election of Mr. Bryan and the
+probable division of the United States into four separate republics.
+Even Snorky Green, who was floundering along on the subject of blazers
+_vs._ sweaters, was impressed, and as for Miss Cantillon, she tried to
+stir up a little commotion by introducing the subject of The Lady from
+Narragansett who had removed freckles by watermelon rinds, but the
+effect was tepid and she relapsed into a listener.
+
+"Say, where did you get it?" said Snorky in a whisper as they passed out
+to the veranda.
+
+"Get what?"
+
+"All this bright boy stuff! Why you're the little boy orator yourself."
+
+"I'll tell you how it's done sometime," said Skippy magnificently.
+
+"Do you like views?" said Vivi, coming to him as a moth to the brightest
+flame.
+
+"That depends," said Skippy, who being still in a mood of negation was
+unwilling to concede anything.
+
+Miss Vivi accepted this as acquiescence and, it being early moonlight
+and dangerous underfoot, took his hand to lead him safely around the
+flower beds. Skippy having just discovered the secret to success encased
+himself in indifference and waited developments.
+
+"Isn't it romantic! Don't you _love_ it?" she said, arrived at a little
+summer house that jutted out over the darkling waters.
+
+"It's rather nice," said Skippy, sternly repressing his emotional
+tendencies.
+
+Vivi now ostentatiously disengaged her hand.
+
+"Please."
+
+"Is it safe now?" said Skippy anxiously.
+
+"How perfectly horrid of you," said the young lady in pretended
+indignation. "You make fun of everything, even the most sacred things."
+
+The relevancy of this was lost on Skippy who condescended to say,
+
+"View isn't half bad if the moon weren't so dreadfully lopsided."
+
+"Unsentimental wretch! I suppose you want to go back?" said Vivi
+reproachfully.
+
+"Are there mosquitoes?"
+
+"Just for that I'll keep you here until you're eaten up," said Vivi,
+plucking a spray of honeysuckle and inhaling it with a sigh. "Isn't it
+wonderful, don't you adore honeysuckle in the moonlight?" she added,
+transferring it to his inspection.
+
+Skippy inhaled it loudly and announced that it was all right.
+
+"Jelly fish," said Vivi throwing it away indignantly.
+
+Skippy resented "jelly fish."
+
+"Well you are! I never saw such a cold calculating unemotional brute.
+You're nothing but a great big icy brain."
+
+Skippy thought of the Roman and a hundred flunkings.
+
+"Better pull in on the infant phenom--Snorky might hear of it," he
+thought.
+
+"Oh, I like it here," he said in a more romantic tone.
+
+"Really?"
+
+"Yep."
+
+A long silence and Vivi inhaled another sprig of honeysuckle and
+devoured the moon.
+
+"How long you going to stay?"
+
+"About a week."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+Another silence.
+
+"You're so different."
+
+"How?"
+
+"Don't know but you are--quite, quite different. You seem so much older
+than Arthur."
+
+"Well that all depends," said Skippy, ready to draw on his imagination.
+
+"You've seen a lot of life, haven't you?"
+
+"Yes I suppose so."
+
+"I saw that--in your hands."
+
+"I say, how about reading my character now?"
+
+"No, not now, sometime later, perhaps."
+
+"Perhaps?"
+
+"Well I don't know if I'd dare. What are you doing to-morrow?"
+
+"Nothing particular."
+
+"Suppose we get up a hay ride and a picnic. The moon will be glorious."
+
+"Bacon and roast corn? Hurray!" said Skippy, most unromantically.
+
+Vivi got up suddenly.
+
+"Let's go back."
+
+"All right, but it's awfully dark."
+
+"Follow me."
+
+Skippy walked purposely into the first flower bed.
+
+"Help, I'm lost!"
+
+Vivi stood considering.
+
+"Are you sorry?"
+
+"Dreadfully. Ouch, I'm in a rose bush!"
+
+"And you promise not to be cynical and aloof?"
+
+"Cross my heart and hope to die," said Skippy, very well pleased with
+himself.
+
+Immediately the hand was offered and retained. To be magnanimous he gave
+it a little extra squeeze.
+
+"That's not fair," said Vivi.
+
+"All's fair in love and war," said Skippy who, under the influence of
+outward conditions, momentarily forgot his rôle.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"My aunt's cat's pants," said Snorky enviously, when they had departed.
+"You're getting to be a rapid worker, old top, you certainly are!"
+
+"Oh I've learned a thing or two," said Skippy pompously.
+
+"Splash with your toes, old horse," said Snorky, shaking his head. "Look
+out, Vivi's an old stager. She collects them."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Scalps," said Snorky with a significant gesture.
+
+"Just watch me."
+
+"You don't say so."
+
+"I've got her feeding out of my hand, gentle as a lamb," said Skippy,
+remembering with a pleasant tickling sensation the mystified fascination
+of her way of looking at him.
+
+"Cheese it," said Snorky shaking his head.
+
+"This is different."
+
+"Whoa, old horse, whoa!"
+
+"Snorky, old gal," said Skippy, who had now settled down into the
+predatory vision Miss Vivi had artfully evoked, "it's easy when you know
+the game."
+
+"And what's the game?"
+
+"Don't get tagged."
+
+"Elucidate."
+
+"Keep 'em running after you. It's the first one who runs away who wins
+every time."
+
+"Oh, simple as that?"
+
+"Sure, that's all there is to it."
+
+"Let 'em love you, eh?"
+
+"Oh well," said Skippy modestly, but as he sought his bed he stole a
+satisfied glance into the mirror.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+SPLASHING WITH YOUR TOES
+
+
+FOR the next six days Skippy was a very busy young man. He had a
+reputation to sustain. The reputation was quite unjustified but that did
+not alter matters. Miss Balou had given it to him and Miss Balou must
+not be disappointed. In the shifting comedy of life, Skippy was now cast
+for the part of the Demon Rusher. In those early ambling days before the
+automobile and the aeroplane had brought their escape valves for human
+energy, the steam pressure of youth sometimes found expression in what
+was known as the rush. As the name implies the object of the male
+participant was to carry all before him in cyclonic style, to dazzle and
+overwhelm the breathless and bewildered lady by the blinding rapidity of
+his showered attentions. By mutual consent nothing binding was ever
+implied in this form of acrobatic sentiment and the knell was sounded
+when either party paused for breath. When a rush began all bystanders
+withdrew as a matter of etiquette and waited for the dust to subside,
+much as, in the Simian days of the race, the lesser monkeys sat on a
+branch and hugged themselves when the big monk came courting.
+
+Skippy borrowed a bicycle and departed from the home of his chum
+directly after breakfast, having likewise borrowed various brilliant
+bits of manly luxury which flashed from his ankles, his neck and his
+breast pocket. At exactly nine o'clock as though by accident Miss Vivi's
+trim figure daintily balanced on the smartest of "Safety" bicycles
+appeared from the Balou driveway and the following brilliant opening
+occurred.
+
+"Why, Jack. What are you doing up so early?"
+
+"Can't you guess?"
+
+"Where are you going!"
+
+"Same place you're going."
+
+"Who asked you?"
+
+"You're going to."
+
+"How d'you know."
+
+"Somebody's eyes have told me so," said Skippy in an unmusical treble.
+
+Vivi pretended to be immensely offended, Skippy was immensely concerned
+that she should be offended. There was a long discussion whether he had
+really offended, whether he should be really forgiven and whether he
+really intended to renounce such airs of proprietorship in the future.
+By this time the two bicycles were close together with Skippy's hands on
+her handle-bars and the terms of peace were concluded by the young lady
+condescending to return to his appreciative gaze from underneath the
+lace brim of her hat whither she had taken refuge. They bicycled along
+the beach and Skippy expressed his wonder at the extent of her wardrobe.
+Vivi then remarked appreciatively upon his (or rather Snorky's) necktie.
+The conversation then expanded, easily and naturally along classic
+lines.
+
+The theory was simplicity itself--who knows, perhaps it has remained the
+same to this day! For the twelve hours consecrated to each other's
+society each day, Skippy denied what Vivi affirmed unless it happened
+that Vivi doubted what Skippy stated as a fact. There were of course
+many ramifications, sometimes it was a question of you did and you
+didn't, sometimes it was and it wasn't, while any future speculation was
+confined to you will and you won't. As a matter of fact, nothing that
+was said really mattered and each knew it. Words were only so many
+verbal flourishes in the most fascinating of duels. Each played at the
+undying passion with open parades and each was only secretly concerned
+with bearing away the other's scalp.
+
+They canoed together, walked together, picnicked together, making only
+short public appearances at the beach for the swimming hour and the
+evening hop. When they came to the club house they came late and danced
+together on the porch to escape the exigencies of society. If some
+unfeeling brute did arrive to claim Vivi, it was always understood that
+the next dance reverted to Skippy, who meanwhile (this was de rigeur)
+sat on the railing and looked dreadfully dejected. It was all very
+serious business, strenuous as training for the football team--but
+Skippy never relaxed. He had a reputation to sustain. Snorky gave him up
+for lost. He no longer sought to warn him, but each night simply as a
+matter of ceremony he passed his hand solicitously over the shock of
+stubby hair which adorned Skippy's elongated cranium just to assure
+himself that the scalp remained unbroken.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+SKIPPY RETIRES WITH HIS SCALP
+
+
+CAME the last day. End of the summer, of summer's warmth. End of languid
+siestas on drowsy beaches, end of balmy moonlight nights, moonlight
+sails, moonlight picnics; end of intimate whispered half laughing, half
+serious intimacies _a deux_. To-morrow separation and a man's life to
+take up again! To-morrow the chill of autumn and the melancholy of
+drifting leaves. The last partings to take, promises to be solemnly
+exchanged--heart burnings, bottom dropped out of everything, another
+milestone to be registered in the scurrying flight of Time!
+
+Mr. Skippy Bedelle and Miss Vivi Balou separated themselves from the
+unromantic middle-aged crowd around the tennis courts and made their way
+up the beach to the sheltering swirls of convenient sand dunes. They
+walked in silence, oppressed by the greatness of their grief, from time
+to time their shoulders touched in dumb understanding.
+
+"To-morrow!" said Skippy with a gulp in his throat.
+
+"Don't!"
+
+"To-morrow--gee!"
+
+He carried a beach chair, four sofa cushions, two rugs, her work-bag, a
+box of chocolates and a romance they had dipped into.
+
+"Don't!" repeated Miss Vivi, gazing out from under her pink parasol with
+stricken eyes at the unending sea.
+
+"To-morrow afternoon at this time!"
+
+"It's been wonderful--wonderful week."
+
+He made a back of the chair, spread the rug and installed her
+solicitously. Then he camped down not too far away, not too near, pulled
+his cap over his eyes, locked his hands over his knees and stared out
+toward the horizon that, somehow, attracts at such moments.
+
+A wind that was already cold played over the frosty waves and sent
+little scurries of sand twisting along the beach.
+
+"Have a chocolate?"
+
+"Thanks."
+
+"Jelly or nut?"
+
+"Nut. Thanks."
+
+They munched in silence.
+
+"That's the trouble with summer," said Skippy at last.
+
+"Yes, isn't it?"
+
+"It's rotten."
+
+"Oh why must everything end?" said Vivi wildly.
+
+"I can't realize that to-morrow--"
+
+"You'll forget, men always forget."
+
+Skippy shook his head.
+
+"Yes. You'll write a letter or two and then heigh ho!"
+
+"Look here, you don't mean that," said Skippy, turning on her.
+
+Vivi's eyes dropped before his righteous indignation.
+
+"No--no I don't mean that."
+
+"Then don't talk that way--especially just now."
+
+"Forgive me--Jack?"
+
+"What?"
+
+"You do forgive me?"
+
+"Of course."
+
+"You're going to do wonderful things at school," said Vivi, trying to be
+brave, "and I'm going to be so proud to think I know you."
+
+"Do you think they'll let you come down to the Andover game?"
+
+"I don't know about the game--but the Prom!"
+
+"Gee, you'll be a knockout there!"
+
+They ate more chocolates, while Skippy debated how to lead the
+conversation into the softer strain before bestowing on the object of
+his affections (for value exchanged, of course) the sacred emblem of the
+Philomathean Debating Society and bringing forth the Lawrenceville
+banner which was tightly folded up in his bulging hip pocket.
+
+"I suppose you'll go back now to Dolly Travers," said Vivi, whose
+appetite for verbal expressions of sentiment was still far from being
+satisfied. "And forget all about--about this wonderful week."
+
+"Women are fickler than men," said Skippy gloomily.
+
+"Not--not always."
+
+"Don't believe it."
+
+"Out of sight out of mind."
+
+"You know better than that," said Skippy, digging into his change pocket
+for the pin.
+
+"How do I know?" said Vivi encouragingly.
+
+"Because--" Suddenly Skippy remembered. His fingers relaxed on the pin.
+He brought forth his hand. "Say, you promised to read my hand you know."
+
+"Did I?"
+
+"Sure you did."
+
+Miss Vivi sat up and carefully pillowed the squat calloused hand in her
+soft one. For a moment she studied it, turning it over and back again,
+running her finger meditatively over the mounds and depressions.
+
+"Well?" said Skippy anxiously.
+
+"Shall I tell all?"
+
+"Everything."
+
+"You have a very strong will--very obstinate and not easily influenced.
+Ambition will be your god and you will sacrifice--" Vivi hesitated.
+
+"I say, go on."
+
+"So far is true, isn't it?"
+
+"Well, pretty true," said Skippy, who began to enjoy his portrait.
+
+"You will sacrifice everything to your ambition--friends, family, the
+woman who loves you."
+
+"Oh, I say!"
+
+"It's here in your hand," said Vivi, shocked at the discovery. "Women
+will play very little part in your life. It's not that you haven't a lot
+to give, you have. See this bump, that's affection. It's very
+developed."
+
+"That's where I threw my thumb out of joint," said Skippy doubtfully.
+
+"But you've had a terrible experience in your life that has shaken your
+faith and you are afraid to trust again." Skippy looked the picture of
+gloom at this and thought bitterly on Mimi Lafontaine after hesitating
+once or twice on the backward journey. "This has made you cynical and
+cold, ready to impute the lowest motives. Women will love you--many
+women, but you will give your heart only once more--and that--_that_
+will be a tragedy, on account of your own lack of faith."
+
+"Say, is all that there?" said Skippy, beginning to be alarmed.
+
+"That and more," said Vivi, warming up. "You are very loyal, not at all
+conceited, brilliant intellectual qualities and you will make a
+success--" Here Vivi paused and turned his hand over, studying it
+carefully. "I see railroads and banking in your hand."
+
+"Do you think so?" said Skippy unconvinced.
+
+"There it is. You will make loads and loads of money."
+
+"I say, do I get married?"
+
+"That is not quite clear," said Vivi frowning. "This looks like it--but
+again this line--the cold calculating streak in your nature--"
+
+At this moment, from down the beach, came a shrill whistle imitative of
+the whip-poor-will, insistent, querulous and repeated.
+
+Vivi dropped his hand and glanced hastily at her watch.
+
+"Good heavens, it's four o'clock!"
+
+"All right, I'm on. Who's the little bird?" said Skippy, who had not
+heard himself described as the acme of suspicion for nothing.
+
+"Jack!"
+
+The whip-poor-will rose to shriller heights.
+
+"It's Charlie Brownrigger," said Vivi, trying to appear embarrassed,
+"and he's come round to say good-bye."
+
+"Oh, indeed."
+
+"I _had_ to let him say good-bye," said Vivi imploringly to the young
+sultan. "I've treated him abominably since you came. I can't be rude to
+a chap, can I? I'll be right back."
+
+"How long's it going to take?" asked Skippy, drawing out his watch.
+
+"Oh about twenty minutes," said Vivi.
+
+"I'll wait exactly half an hour. Four-thirty to the minute. Not a second
+more."
+
+"I do believe you're jealous, Jack Bedelle!" said Vivi expectantly.
+
+"Jealousy has no part in my nature," said Skippy loftily. "Besides you
+can see it in my hand. Firmness, that's all!"
+
+"Brute!" said Vivi with a killing glance.
+
+She picked up the pink parasol and hastened down the beach. Skippy
+fished out the Philomathean Debating Society pin and slowly attached it
+to his vest. He switched to the vacated place with the back rest and
+began to whistle to himself. At the end of a seeming hour he glanced at
+his watch. Exactly seven minutes had elapsed.
+
+"Half an hour was a mistake. Fifteen minutes is enough for a mut like
+Brownrigger. I should have been firmer. When a girl gets you to waiting
+for her--she has you going and coming. Firmer, I should have been much
+firmer!"
+
+He slipped off his shoes to empty them of sand, and in doing so filled
+the gayly coloured work-bag that was Vivi's. His toilette finished, he
+took up the bag to clean it in turn. At the first touch as fate had
+decreed a book tumbled out and lay with opened pages before him. It
+looked most suspiciously like a diary. He averted his eyes and then his
+glance came slowly back to it.
+
+"Here, that's not square," he said to himself angrily, torn by a mighty
+temptation. He leaned over and closed the book abruptly. The next moment
+he was staring at three gilded words that confronted him with the
+suddenness of Belshazzar's vision:
+
+                          THE CHAP RECORD
+
+A sudden brain storm swept over the emotional nature of Mr. Skippy
+Bedelle, of the sort which in modern legal etiquette is held to excuse
+all crimes. He knew what a chap record was. He had found one in his
+sister Clara's bureau and had been lavishly paid for his silence. He
+opened it violently and this is what he read:
+
+HARRY FELTON. June 30-Sept. 6th. Good-looking in a soapy sort of way,
+but dull: Good dancer, agonizingly slow at a twosing. Takes what you
+give him and is grateful. Good for last minute calls.
+
+JOE RANDOLPH. July 2d-August 6th. Awfully lavish and liberal. Spoiled
+and hard to keep in place. Useful later. Salt away for College Prom.
+
+CHARLES BROWNRIGGER. Xmas to--. Terribly proper and easily shocked.
+Every girl an angel. Seeking a good influence. Good only for concerts
+and lectures.
+
+CHARLIE DULER. Easter vacation. Professional flirt. Tried hard for him
+but no go. On to all the old tricks. Too much alike.
+
+HECTOR CHISOLM. May 3 to May 6th. Three day rush fast and furious. Nice
+teeth and eyes, cold English style in daytime but wilts rapidly in the
+moonlight. Dreadfully exciting. Au revoir!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Having thus wandered through the carnage, Skippy braced himself and
+read:
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+JACK BEDELLE. August 20th--Dreadfully young and conceited, feed him on
+flattery--nice eyes but funny nose--poor conversationalist but works
+hard. Dreadful dancer. Pretends indifference but awfully soft in spots.
+Hooked him in twenty minutes--
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Skippy laid the book down in his lap and glanced up the beach which
+showed no signs of an advancing parasol. Then he looked at his watch
+which indicated exactly the half hour. He sat a long moment thinking.
+Then he opened the book and at the paragraph devoted to him he added:
+
+                  "_Easy to hook is hard to hold._"
+
+But this did not satisfy him. He stood up and suddenly inspired sunk to
+his knees and hurriedly gathered together the sand into a mound capable
+of burying Miss Vivi's little body. Across it he laid the opened book.
+At its head he placed the box of chocolates as a headstone. Then below
+he wrote in the sand (symbol indeed of transient loves):
+
+                          SACRED TO THE MEMORY
+                                  OF
+                             VIOLET BALOU
+                          SLAIN BY HER OWN HAND
+                            August 27th, 1896.
+
+Then as a masterly afterthought he added savagely:
+
+                           GONE AND NOW FORGOTTEN
+
+Mr. Skippy Bedelle then wriggled away through the sand dunes just as
+Miss Vivi Balou with malice aforethought came up the beach accompanied
+by Mr. Charles Brownrigger.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII
+
+THE PHILOSOPHICAL ATTITUDE
+
+
+IT happened on the day before school opened; at that moment when Skippy
+returning from his first sentimental summer had no other thought than to
+rest up from the fatigue of the vacation and devote his activities to
+the serious business of life. There were the freshman (a discouraging
+lot) to be properly educated, taught to punctuate their sentences with a
+humble "sir," "if you please" and "thank you;" there was a certain score
+to be settled with Al at the Jigger Shop and the basis of a new credit
+to be argued, there was the prize room on the third floor overlooking
+the campus to be re-decorated with the loot of the summer, and one
+crucial question to be decided forthwith:
+
+"Shall we start training now or gorge ourselves for just one more day?"
+
+"The Jiggers are peach, soft and creamy," said Snorky with a pensive
+look. "But we should set an example you know, old top, and all that sort
+of thing."
+
+"Keerect, we must."
+
+"I can see the crowd up at Conover's putting away the pancakes," said
+Snorky insidiously.
+
+"Be firm," said Skippy, returning to his trunk.
+
+"It isn't only the Jiggers," said Snorky, who sometimes practised virtue
+but without the slightest enthusiasm, "it's--it's those éclairs--never
+tasted anything like them, big, fat, luscious, oozing with cream--"
+
+"Shut up," said Skippy indignantly. "Where's your house spirit?"
+
+"Can't a fellow be human?" said Snorky in an aggrieved tone.
+
+"All right, all right--but put your mind on other things," said Skippy
+nervously.
+
+He disengaged an armful from the bottom of his trunk and spreading it on
+the window seat, contemplated the touch of many feminine hands with an
+expression that was as cynically blasé as that of the traditional
+predatory bachelor. Whenever Skippy found a mood too elusive to be
+expressed in words, his lips instinctively resorted to boyhood's musical
+outlet. His eyes traveled appraisingly over sofa cushions, picture
+frames, knitted neckties and flags that represent those select
+institutions where young ladies are finished off. He began to whistle,
+
+          "I don't want to play in your yard,
+            I don't like you any more . . ."
+
+"My, you're a cold-hearted brute," said Snorky, in whom perhaps the
+spirit of envy was strong.
+
+"I am," said Skippy unctuously, "and I am going to be brutier, take a
+tip from yours truly, _Moony_."
+
+He disposed of half a dozen cushions, draped two flags and carefully
+placed three photographs amid the gallery on his bureau.
+
+"Do you think that's honorable?" said Snorky resentfully.
+
+"Scalps, that's all!" said Skippy with a grandiloquent wave of his hand.
+
+"I get you. Heart whole and fancy free etcetera etceteray?"
+
+"Every time."
+
+"Since when?" said Snorky wickedly.
+
+Skippy allowed this to pass, but having pensively contemplated the
+effect produced by the addition of Miss Dolly Travers, Miss Jennie
+Tupper and Miss Vivi Balou to the adoring galaxy of the past, he swung a
+leg over the table and assuming that newly acquired manner of a man of
+the world, which was specially galling to his chum, announced,
+
+"Snorky, old horse, you play it wrong."
+
+"I do, eh?"
+
+"You do. There's nothing in that fussing game. Women, my boy, are our
+inferiors."
+
+"Well, it took you some time to find it out."
+
+"Keerect, but now I'm wise. Woman is like a harp in the desert, played
+upon by every passing wind."
+
+"Where'd ye read that?"
+
+"If you're going in for that sort of thing get promiscuous. The only
+cure for one woman is another."
+
+"You ought to know."
+
+"Are you corresponding with Margarita?" said Skippy suddenly.
+
+"And if I am?"
+
+Skippy shook his head sadly.
+
+"Woman--" he began sententiously and just then fate knocked at the door.
+
+"Come in if you're good-looking," said Snorky, glad of the interruption.
+
+The door opened and discovered a short bulbous freshman, just a whit
+embarrassed as freshmen should be in the presence of royalty.
+
+"Oh well, come in any way," said Skippy. "What's your name, freshman!"
+
+"Potterman," said the rotund youngster squeezing in.
+
+"Sir."
+
+"Sir."
+
+"What's the rest of it--the handle, the nickname."
+
+"Are we telling our real names?" said the new arrival, cocking his
+derby.
+
+"Green, get out the bamboo cane," said Skippy solemnly.
+
+"Oh well, they call me Hippo--sir," said Potterman hastily.
+
+"Ah yes, Hippo Potterman. Of course. That's good, but we'll try to do
+better by you. Where did they find you?"
+
+"Philamedelphia, sir."
+
+"What's that you've got there?" said Snorky just about to fall upon him
+bodily.
+
+"Please, sir, it's a letter from Mrs. Bedelle, your aunt."
+
+"Oh, I see," said Skippy with a feeling of disappointment. "You know my
+aunt? Well, freshman, you may give it to me. I permit you. Advance.
+That's it. Curtsey. A little lower. Better."
+
+          DEAR JACK,
+
+          My very dear friend Susan Potterman is sending her
+          son  Cornelius--
+
+Skippy frowned and looked up incredulously.
+
+"Is your name really Cornelius?"
+
+Potterman flushed like the rose and said with a gulp:
+
+"Yes, sir, it is."
+
+"Too bad, too bad."
+
+          son Cornelius to Lawrenceville. Please do
+          everything you can to make him at home and see
+          that he meets the _best_ boys. His mother and
+          sister will go on with him and I want you
+          _particularly_ to be _very_ nice to them.
+
+                              Affectionately,
+                                         AUNT CARRIE.
+
+Skippy having read this twice, looked in the envelope to make sure that
+a five dollar bill was not enclosed, as all aunts should remember to do,
+and transferred his gaze to the fidgeting Hippo.
+
+"H'm, first time at boarding school?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Governesses before?"
+
+Hippo, who had been recovering from his first feeling of awe, roared
+loudly at this.
+
+Skippy looked indignantly at this breach of etiquette and reached
+thoughtfully for a tennis racket.
+
+"Please, sir," said Hippo hastily, "High school."
+
+Skippy considered him thoughtfully and something told him that in the
+right-hand lower vest pocket there was undoubtedly a certain amount of
+round hard silver bodies and moreover that this condition was not simply
+episodic but chronic.
+
+"That coot may be fresh but he is going to do a lot of heavy spending,"
+he said to himself with conviction.
+
+How he knew is immaterial. There is an instinct that guides--some have
+it, some haven't it. You can't explain it. Doc Macnooder for instance
+could diagnose a pocket-book as keenly as a surgeon. It's a gift, that's
+all. Skippy possessed this gift.
+
+"Mother just brought you in?"
+
+Hippo acknowledged this with a look of the greatest distress.
+
+"Sister too?"
+
+"Damn it, yes!"
+
+Skippy looked at Snorky and shook his head.
+
+"Don't you know that profanity is a wicked, wicked habit, Hippo?"
+
+Hippo's mouth started to swallow his ears, then returned to rest at
+signs of a hostile atmosphere. He swung from foot to foot, looked
+sheepish, looked terrified and finally blurted out:
+
+"I beg pardon, sir."
+
+"It is a wicked habit, Hippo, but we are here to help you. It is very
+lucky for you that you have come to the right school, where you will
+meet boys of fine manly standards. Kneel down, Hippo."
+
+"What, sir?"
+
+"Go over to the bed and kneel down," said Skippy in a voice of great
+sadness. "Don't hesitate, Hippo. That's better. Now, Hippo, I want you
+to reflect upon what a wicked, wicked thing profanity is and I want you
+to ask God to forgive you and help you. Silently, Hippo."
+
+Hippo, who was green and fresh but not at all green and gullible, went
+through the prescribed program with the utmost gravity.
+
+"Do you feel better now, Hippo?" said Snorky solemnly.
+
+"Yes, sir, but I'd like a little more time, sir."
+
+"Stand up," said Skippy frowning.
+
+Hippo, unchastened, bounded to his feet and saluted.
+
+"And, Hippo, I'm afraid," said Skippy relentlessly, "that you don't
+appreciate what a mother's love means. Think how your mother has watched
+over you all these years, think how she has scrubbed behind your ears,
+think of the hundreds and hundreds of toothbrushes--"
+
+But at this, as Snorky gulped and barely converted a laugh into a sneeze
+with a hurried dive into the closet, Skippy abandoning his pedagogical
+air said in a more natural tone:
+
+"Well, Hippo, I shall want to talk with you very seriously on this some
+other time. Your manners are shocking and your morals worse, but I am
+here. Don't worry. Meanwhile, ahem, you can bring your family in to
+tea."
+
+"Thank you, kind sir."
+
+"Hippo, you are fresh."
+
+"But you _are_ kind, aren't you, sir?" said Hippo with assumed
+innocence.
+
+"Get your hat and wait downstairs," said Skippy deciding to abandon the
+lighter tone.
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Hippo?"
+
+"What, sir?"
+
+"Don't forget."
+
+"What, sir?"
+
+"The curtsey, you know."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A quarter of an hour later Skippy and Snorky with Hippo in tow started
+across the campus to show their protégé the historic spots, beginning
+with Laloo's where the merry hot dogs whistled to one another in
+steaming cans, by way of Bill Appleby's where ginger-pop and root-beer
+waited, to the Jigger Shop where the Jigger cooled and Conover's where
+the pancake sizzled.
+
+Opposite the Jigger Shop the celebrated Doc Macnooder, resplendent in a
+varsity sweater, was surveying the hungry Jigger-fed crowd and debating
+whether to go right up and pay for his sustenance or wait a little
+longer and see what might turn up.
+
+"Well, Skippy, been inventing anything new?" said Macnooder pleasantly
+after the introductions.
+
+"I say, Doc, I want to put it up to you," said Skippy hastily, for he
+feared any reference to bathtubs or mosquitoes might detract from the
+respect which was essential in Hippo. "I'm out for the scrub, you know,
+and what I wanted to ask you was do you think training ought to start
+now or wait until school opens."
+
+Macnooder's mind scorned subtleties. It moved by the shortest cuts to
+the practical issue.
+
+"Has he got the price?" he said looking at Hippo.
+
+"He has."
+
+"Let's eat."
+
+Macnooder looked appraisingly at Hippo, whom Nature had destined to play
+at center rush, to be mauled and cuffed and suffocated under scores of
+scuffing, struggling bodies. A flicker of sympathy should have stirred,
+but it didn't.
+
+"You'll need quite a lot of stuff," he said pensively.
+
+"Nothing doing, Doc," said Skippy, winking hard at his protégé. "Hippo's
+fitted out."
+
+"How about fountain-pens or crockery sets, or patent nail clippers?"
+
+"I dote on fountain-pens," began Hippo.
+
+"Hippo's under my protection," said Skippy militantly. "We're sort of
+related."
+
+"Oh well, let's eat then," said Macnooder with a reluctant look.
+
+"Don't take anything from that fellow even if he gives it to you," said
+Skippy in a whisper to Hippo. "Elucidations later."
+
+Al had two attitudes of welcome, according to the record of the books,
+one in which the hand advanced impulsively and a smile broke from under
+the shaggy yellow bang and another where the hand remained in a
+stationary receptive cup, or sometimes caressed the limp ends of the
+mustache in a way most discouraging and disheartening to the delinquent
+debtor. When Doc Macnooder arrived, however, he paid him the further
+honor to carefully close the glass cases where éclair and fruit cake
+were waiting the call to service, and braced himself against the
+counter.
+
+"Hello, Al," said Skippy affably, "here we are again. Set 'em up four
+times."
+
+"I see you and I see that there Doc Macnooder," said Al in an
+unconvinced sort of way.
+
+"Set 'em up," said Macnooder in an encouraging tone.
+
+"_Who's_ settin' 'em up?" said Al, resorting to his toothpick.
+
+Macnooder looked at Skippy, Skippy looked at Snorky, then all three
+looked at Hippo.
+
+"The pleasure is mine," said Hippo and with a purse-proud gesture he
+flicked on the counter a twenty dollar bill.
+
+Al was not easily shocked but for once his perfect manner left him. He
+glanced at Hippo and then enviously at Macnooder.
+
+"I didn't know they picked them as early as that," he said
+enigmatically. "Doc, you'll be buying this place in a week."
+
+"I could buy it now," said Macnooder frowning, "and Al, step to the back
+and have a little business talk with me."
+
+Al, having received payment and displayed the Jiggers, left for the back
+of the store to that secluded nook which had heard a hundred
+explanations and supplications from the improvident and hungry. Skippy,
+who despite the new assurance of his public manner, was willing to learn
+at the feet of a master, Jigger in hand, moved into a position of
+eavesdropping.
+
+"Nineteen dollars and seventy-two cents," said Al, coming to the point.
+
+"Exactly what my little proposition comes to," said Macnooder affably.
+"Tear it up, Al, you'll do it sooner or later so why not now?"
+
+"What's the flim-flam?" said Al, who recognized in Macnooder qualities
+of a superior intelligence.
+
+"I don't like the word," said Macnooder in a pained tone. "I've got an
+idea and you're going to buy it. Al, the Jigger Shop has had a cinch, a
+monopoly, a trust. You fixed prices and you've controlled the output.
+Now answer me, yes or no. Have you ever paid out one cent in
+commissions?"
+
+"Get to the point."
+
+"I will. I have an idea, I might say a brilliant idea and when I say I
+like the idea better than any idea I can remember--you know me--I'm
+modest, but Al, it's a wonder. You'll like it. No, change that line, you
+may not like it but you'll respect it. Al, I'm going to let you in, give
+you the first chance. Conover would double the commission. Appleby would
+go wild over it. But, Al, I'm giving _you_ the first chance."
+
+"Nineteen dollars and seventy-two cents," said Al, making a motion to
+close his ears.
+
+"Not a cent less," said Macnooder firmly, who according to his manner,
+having produced the proper hypnotic effect, now came to the point. "Sit
+down, Al, if you won't sit down--brace yourself. The idea's coming now
+and the idea's loaded with dynamite. Suppose, I say suppose, it was in
+my power to boycott you."
+
+"God Almighty couldn't do that," said Al.
+
+"Not as you see it--you're right there, Al, shrewd and clever! Al, there
+are ten freshmen in the Dickinson. Think hard now, the idea's growing.
+Ten freshmen. Suppose,--I only say suppose now that as a disciplinary
+measure we should decide that no freshman could enter the Jigger Shop
+say--well let's be moderate--for the space of three months. We might let
+them go to Conover's or Laloo's and then again--"
+
+"Macnooder," said Al explosively, "when they lead you to the gallows
+I'll be sitting right up front if it cost every cent I have."
+
+"Al, you grieve me."
+
+"It's blackmail! It's extortion and blame it I believe you'd do it."
+
+"No, Al, it's not blackmail, it's not extortion. If I came to you and
+said out and out, flat, tear up that account of mine or I'll boycott
+you--_that_, Al, that would be all you say."
+
+"My Gawd, Doc, why do you waste your time in this little place anyhow?"
+
+"You see, Al, it's this way," said Macnooder, smiling at the compliment,
+"I'm coming to you as Macnooder your attorney, that's one person, to use
+his influence with Macnooder the financier, that's another person--I'm a
+lobbyist, a paid lobbyist."
+
+"Nineteen dollars and seventy-two cents," said Al in a fainter voice.
+
+"Al, I'm surprised and shocked. I thought your mind leaped at things.
+You don't see it yet. You're thinking in terms of ten freshmen--"
+
+"Nineteen doll . . ."
+
+"But suppose the Dickinson lays down the law, suppose the Kennedy
+follows suit. You saw what that fellow flashed, a twenty dollar
+yellowback, a word to Skippy and the Kennedy would follow. Skippy, you
+understand, would have to be _protected_, you get that. Well, what would
+happen? Every house in the school would follow suit. What does that
+mean? Figure it out. It means one hundred freshmen multiplied by ninety
+days multiplied by at least two Jiggers a fresh--per day--you know how
+freshmen eat--"
+
+But here, Skippy, terrified, tiptoed away. Macnooder aroused in him the
+lust for gold and he wished to retain a few simple ideals. He signaled
+Snorky and Hippo and escaped up the road to the home of the pancake.
+
+"Doc Macnooder is a wonder but he's not, well he's not quite the sort of
+chap you want to associate with, Hippo. Understand?"
+
+"I'm young but I'm not so green as all that," said Hippo winking wisely.
+
+"In fact, Doc's a sponge and you made an awful break."
+
+"I did, what's that, sir?"
+
+"You shouldn't have shown him that twenty dollar bill. He'll never let
+up so long as he remembers that."
+
+"Skippy's right, Hippo," said Snorky.
+
+"What'll I do?"
+
+"Leave it to us. We'll think out some way."
+
+After a good deal of thinking, they returned from a heavy performance at
+Conover's, laden with a large creamcake, a half dozen éclairs, a box of
+Huyler's and two pounds of Turkish paste, after placing an order for
+tinned meats, cheese, saltines and root-beer.
+
+"I say, this sort of removes the lurking danger, doesn't it?" said
+Hippo, searching in his pocket for the last half-dollar.
+
+"We'll store the grub in our rooms," said Snorky solemnly, "and then
+there won't be any danger at all."
+
+"Oh, thank you, kind sir," said the irrepressible Hippo, and only the
+soothing presence of the layer cake against his breast kept Snorky from
+a mood of wrath.
+
+"If you've got to mother that little squirt," said Snorky wrathfully,
+once they had returned to their room, "you'll have your hands full,
+that's all I wish to remark. A fresher, nervier little nuisance--"
+
+"Nuisance is going to get a lot of mothering," said Skippy with a
+far-off look in his eyes. "But remember, old dear, that's why we're
+here. That's why the faculty invites us to Lawrenceville."
+
+"Well," said Snorky as he stowed away the purchases and arranged the
+éclairs on the tea-table, "if we can keep him away from Doc Macnooder,
+there's going to be a few compensations."
+
+"Nuisance will neither be affectionate nor familiar by this time
+to-morrow," said Skippy grinding his teeth.
+
+"Cheese it! Hide the towels--here they come!"
+
+A knock and then the voice of Hippo in flippant familiarity:
+
+"All right, Skippy, we're good looking. Open up."
+
+Skippy looked at Snorky and swallowed hard while his right arm worked
+convulsively.
+
+"Come in," he said with an effort.
+
+The door opened and Miss Potterman triumphantly entered his life. Mrs.
+Potterman was there and Hippo with his impertinent smirk but neither
+Skippy nor Snorky saw anything else but that wonderful vision. Something
+unbelievable had suddenly stepped out of their favorite Gibson picture
+and was advancing in a halo. Violets and daffodils began to sprout from
+the carpet and birds sang in the window frames. It was instantaneous and
+it was terrific.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX
+
+LOVE PLUS HIPPO
+
+
+JUST as there are professional conversationalists and professional
+sponges, Miss Potterman was a professional beauty. There was nothing
+accidental or temporary about her. She was complete, perfect, and she
+knew her loveliness. After five years' triumphant progress in society
+she was accustomed to the petrifying effect of her sudden presence on a
+beauty-worshipping sex. She did not walk as other mortals walk, but
+floated in fragrantly and Skippy stood staring rock-still, as though
+Hippo had flashed the head of Medusa. None of which by the way was lost
+on the keenly observant Hippo.
+
+"I beg pardon, I'm Skippy," he said shaking himself.
+
+"Mr. Bedelle, isn't it?" said Miss Potterman in the tones that angels
+are supposed to employ.
+
+Skippy saw no one else. In another moment he was seated on the
+window-seat entranced, dazed and blissfully content with his fate,
+docile as the rabbit in the presence of the boa constrictor.
+
+"I'm so glad Corny is in your house," said Miss Potterman with a smile
+in the irresistible eyes. "You will watch over him, won't you, Mr.
+Bedelle?"
+
+"Will I? You bet I will!"
+
+"You see he's my only brother and we didn't want him to go to boarding
+school--not just yet. That is, mother and I. Dad insisted on it. I don't
+think he's always, well--quite appreciated Cornelius."
+
+"I understand," said Skippy, averting his look. Even in the intoxication
+of her presence he could appreciate Dad.
+
+"You see, Corny's different from other boys, Mr. Bedelle. He's more like
+a grown-up person. He has a wonderful mind and such an unusual
+personality. I don't want him to lose it all and be just like every
+other boy. And some boys, I'm afraid, won't understand him just at
+first. You will look after him, protect him, won't you?"
+
+"I'd promise _you_ anything," said Skippy recklessly, which is the
+privilege of sixteen in the presence of twenty-five.
+
+Miss Potterman smiled without surprise and laid her hand gently a moment
+on his arm in the deadliest of feminine gestures.
+
+"Corny's told me how kind you have been already."
+
+Skippy looked incredulous.
+
+"Indeed he has. Really he's quite fond of you already."
+
+"I say, Sis," said Nuisance at this moment, "hasn't Skippy got a
+whang-dinger of a room?"
+
+And he approached with the layer cake and the éclairs.
+
+"What a wonderful spread," said Miss Potterman, "but really you have
+been too extravagant!"
+
+Something in Skippy's sudden look decided Hippo to keep the secret, but
+he revenged himself on the cake in a way that made his sister exclaim:
+
+"Corny, where _are_ your manners?"
+
+"'S all right. I'll buy another," said Hippo, who then winked brazenly
+at Skippy.
+
+"I'll murder him, I will," said Skippy wrathfully to himself. "I'd strip
+the hide off him, if it--if it weren't for--" Then he raised his eyes
+and beheld the reason why, smiling at him with perfect faith.
+
+"I'm afraid we've spoiled Corny just a little," she said hesitating.
+
+"Oh, that's all right."
+
+"Is--is there much of that dreadful hazing?"
+
+"Well, sometimes," said Skippy, who always placed the proper value on
+his services.
+
+"Oh dear, I've heard such dreadful things have happened," said Miss
+Potterman, thoroughly alarmed.
+
+"That's only when accidents happen."
+
+"Accidents!"
+
+"Don't worry, Miss Potterman," said Skippy with the manner of a Grand
+Duke. "Fellows do get rough sometimes, but I'll look after him."
+
+Miss Potterman again laid her hand on his arm.
+
+"Thank you."
+
+She stayed but half an hour. The door closed. The birds fled from the
+windows and the daffodils retired under the carpet.
+
+"Whew!" said Snorky explosively.
+
+Skippy fell back on a chair and fanned himself.
+
+"What's the use?" he said disconsolately.
+
+"Women are our inferiors," said Snorky wickedly.
+
+"What eyes!"
+
+"Woman is like a harp--"
+
+"Woman!" said Skippy rousing himself indignantly. "You don't call that a
+woman! That's Maude Adams and Lorna Doone and--and the Gibson Girl
+rolled into one!"
+
+"Don't blame you," said Snorky heavily. "It ain't right to let anything
+as wonderful as that roam around loose. Skippy, it's all wrong."
+
+"You're right there."
+
+"Well," said Snorky reflectively, "she turned up in time. We'd have had
+Nuisance ready for the undertaker by the morning."
+
+"My hands are tied," said Skippy glumly. "I've promised."
+
+"Me too, but how are we going to stick it out?"
+
+"Well, we'll have to treat Nuisance with moral influences," said Skippy
+thoughtfully. "It will be longer, longer and harder."
+
+They dined with Miss Potterman at the Inn and that and a walk about the
+campus under the stars completed the devastation. Before it was over
+Skippy actually heard himself called "Jack," had shaken hands on an
+eternal friendship, promised to write from time to time of Hippo's
+progress and needs, agreed to defend him from bodily injury and promised
+to accompany him home for the short Thanksgiving recess. The final touch
+came when Miss Potterman sought to press upon him a large bill in case
+Hippo should be perishing of thirst or hunger.
+
+Skippy put it away. It hurt to do so, it choked him, but he did it.
+
+"Not from you--I couldn't," he said huskily. "I--well, I just couldn't."
+
+That night as he stood at his bureau and looked into the eyes of the
+past, at Mimi and Dolly and Jennie and Vivi the hunter of scalps, he
+spoke.
+
+"Snorky?"
+
+"What is it, old boy?"
+
+"Ever go fishing?"
+
+"You betcha."
+
+"Do you know the feeling after you've been dabbling with six-inch and
+five-inch and four-inch trout all day,--and something about three feet
+long weighing ten or twelve pounds grabs your hook? Do you get me?"
+
+"Sure, I get you," said Snorky gazing heavily out at the stars, "but oh
+gee, Skippy, why does she have to be Nuisance's sister?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Snorky's worst forebodings were realized. Nuisance earned his title a
+hundredfold within the week. Dennis de Brian de Boru Finnegan had been
+fresh, was fresh and would freshen more, but Dennis was amusing and
+added to the gayety of nations. Nuisance was what his name implied,
+simply intolerable. You stumbled over him and you bumped into him. When
+state secrets were being discussed in whispers, Nuisance was always
+within earshot. He was the extra, the intruder, the tail to the kite. He
+did not actively offend against the traditions which govern freshmen in
+the incubator period. He was too clever for that. He had submitted to
+the mild hazing with a cheerfulness which robbed it of all its sting. He
+had climbed water towers and sung appropriate hymns. He had sat in
+washbasins and gravely pulled imaginary miles against the toothpicks
+furnished him as oars. He had submitted to the pi's as they came with a
+full recognition that the second and third men in the mounting heap
+were extremely more uncomfortable than himself with a mattress for a
+vis-à-vis. He was not insubordinate--he was just a nuisance.
+
+But if he kept skilfully within the letter of the law so far as the rest
+of the house was concerned he was irrepressible once in the company of
+Skippy. Nothing that Skippy could do could chill his affection or bring
+him to a proper realization of the deference which should mark the
+manner of a freshman towards one of the lords of the earth.
+
+"Nuisance is like a wet muddy Newfoundland pup that wants to live in
+your lap," said Snorky at the end of the second week.
+
+"Some day," said Skippy shaking his head, "my worse nature is going to
+rise up and get the better of me."
+
+"I hope I see it!" said Snorky enthusiastically.
+
+"Of course I'll have to hold in until after Thanksgiving," said Skippy
+disconsolately.
+
+"What? Oh, naturally."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL
+
+REALITY MINUS HIPPO
+
+
+THANKSGIVING over, Snorky confidently waited the explosion.
+
+"Skippy's going to the bad," he said to Dennis de Brian de Boru
+Finnegan. "He's nervous, he's fidgety, he talks in his sleep. There's no
+living with him."
+
+"Some day it'll come," said Dennis cheerfully. "Some day there'll be a
+bang-up, two by two procession, slow music, flowers omitted; and right
+on a nice green shutter will be stretched our Sister's darling boy."
+
+"Well, I'm getting tired of waiting."
+
+"Keep hoping," said Dennis wisely. "Human nature is human nature. Say,
+look at that!"
+
+Across the campus came Skippy, fists sunk in his pockets, hat-brim down,
+stalking rapidly, and at his heels the irrepressible Nuisance.
+
+"It's shocking," said Snorky, "poor old Skippy!"
+
+"That's what love means," said Finnegan contemptuously. "Do you know
+what he reminds me of? A poor lonely cur going down the road with a tin
+can tied to his tail."
+
+"Hello, Skippy," said Snorky sadly.
+
+Skippy looked at them and grunted.
+
+At this moment Nuisance caught him by the arm.
+
+"Say, old chap, what are you going to do now?"
+
+"Going to bed, damn it!" said Skippy and bolted within.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+How could Snorky and Dennis that unworldly fledgling know what Skippy
+suffered? The forty-eight hours of the Thanksgiving vacation had been
+like a narcotic dream. He had been under the same roof with her, sat by
+her side in the darkened theatre and thrilled at the low sobby music
+that sent his imagination helter-skelter into dangerous pastures;
+received her confidences, gravely discussed with her the character and
+eligibility of older men, confided in turn his life's project to launch
+mosquito-proof socks on a world scale; received the full force of her
+lovely radiant gentlest of smiles; danced with her alone a whole hour in
+the Potterman ballroom, suffocated with happiness; and for all of which
+had promised what? To wear Nuisance about his neck like a millstone, to
+protect, cherish and guide him through the perils and temptations of
+boarding-school as though--as though he were his own brother. And
+Nuisance knew! That was the worst of it,--Nuisance knew the thin tyrant
+skein by which he held him irrevocably linked! Christmas was yet to come
+and for what Christmas might hold Skippy possessed his soul in
+patience.
+
+Then the blow fell. A week later as Snorky Green was returning from the
+village he perceived Dennis de Brian de Boru in a state of excitement
+waving a newspaper at him from the porch.
+
+"There must be another birth in the faculty," thought Snorky, puzzled to
+ascribe an adequate reason. Such events, be it mentioned, were usually
+attended by cuts and in the higher spheres with even a half holiday.
+
+Finnegan rushed forward, dove at his knees and spilled him on the ground
+joyously.
+
+"Damn you, you mad Irishman," said Snorky picking himself up and
+disentangling himself from the newspaper. "What's hit you anyway?"
+
+"It's come, hooray!"
+
+"What's come?"
+
+"Skippy's free!"
+
+Snorky, further mystified, seized Finnegan and having sufficiently
+shaken him demanded an explanation.
+
+"Eighth page, first column, ouch!" said Finnegan.
+
+Snorky opened it and read:
+
+                       MISS POTTERMAN TO MARRY
+                        HAROLD B. DRINKWATER
+
+At this moment the door opened and Skippy came heavily out.
+
+"Have you seen it?" said Dennis breathlessly.
+
+"Seen what?"
+
+"The paper!"
+
+"What's in the paper?"
+
+Dennis glanced at Snorky and solemnly handed over the fatal
+announcement. All levity had disappeared. A man's sorrow after all must
+be sacred.
+
+Skippy read and suddenly put down the paper. Only two things came to his
+mind--wedding immediate and she had not even written him.
+
+At this most auspicious moment, Nuisance came gamboling around the
+house.
+
+"Hi, Skippy, old sport, what ye doin'?"
+
+Dennis de Brian de Boru looked at Snorky and then simultaneously each
+sat down and retired into an expectant audience.
+
+Nuisance frolicked enthusiastically up for his victim and then stopped.
+He had just caught Skippy's expression. He stopped and suddenly looked
+at the ground. He _knew_!
+
+Slowly, carefully, warily with his eyes on Skippy he began a strategic
+withdrawal. Skippy moved stealthily forward, picking up his steps as a
+rat terrier does. Nuisance slunk away, calculating the distance to the
+corner of the house. Skippy increased the pace, drawing ominously
+nearer.
+
+Then Finnegan's shrill voice cried:
+
+"Sic him, Skippy!"
+
+The next moment, Nuisance, panic-stricken, was scuttling for his life,
+with Skippy roaring at his heels.
+
+And just back of the lonely stretches of the Dickinson, Skippy fell upon
+him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That night Skippy, wise by disillusionment, confided his sorrows to a
+diary which began as follows:
+
+"What I don't know about women, ain't worth knowing. Resolved; if any
+loving is going to be done, they can do the loving."
+
+But that of course is still another story. . . .
+
+
+THE END
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+Obvious punctuation errors repaired.
+
+Page 63, "bandanna" changed to "bandana" to match remainder of text
+(green bandana handkerchief)
+
+Page 89, "thoughfully" changed to "thoughtfully" (said Snorky
+thoughtfully)
+
+Page 110, "revery" changed to "reverie" (in a dark reverie)
+
+Page 123, "vis-a-vis" changed to "vis-à-vis" (vis-à-vis with a
+youngster)
+
+Page 124, "subleties" changed to "subtleties" (These subtleties
+naturally)
+
+Page 162, "longue" changed to "lounge" (chaise-lounge of her)
+
+Page 214, "customs" changed to "custom" (custom-made dress suit)
+
+Page 245, "are't" changed to "aren't" (commandments, aren't they)
+
+Page 251, "celler" changed to "cellar" (the salt cellar)
+
+Page 293, "paticularly" changed to "particularly" (_particularly_ to be
+_very_)
+
+Page 297"subleties" changed to "subtleties" (mind scorned subtleties)
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Skippy Bedelle, by Owen Johnson
+
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