"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?"



"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.



"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 ROLE

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 Valliere. 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 roles.

"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-a-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 role 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 role. "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 role 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 role.

"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!