Skinner's Dress Suit Part 18

"Well," said Honey, "it beats me."

On reading the morning paper, Mrs. J. Matthews Wilkinson said to her husband, "They're here--the Skinners--Jennie Colby's friends, you know.

We must have them to dinner."

"When?" said Wilkinson, looking up from his paper.

"I dare say they'll be here but a short time. Better make it to-night."

"You're the doctor," said Wilkinson, resuming his paper.

"We'll send out a hurry call for the Armitages and the Bairds and the Wendells," said Mrs. Wilkinson, mentally running over her list of the most select of St. Paul's inner circle. "We'll show these people that we're not barbarians out here."

"Can you corral all those folks for to-night? Is n't it rather sudden, my dear?"

"I've dined with them on shorter notice than that, just to accommodate them. I 'll call up the Skinners right away."

Honey answered the 'phone. Of course they'd be delighted to dine at the Wilkinsons, but every night was filled up to Sat.u.r.day. A pause.

Hold Sat.u.r.day for them? She should say they would.

There was another pause. Then Honey clapped her hand over the receiver and turned to Skinner.

"Can we take a spin with them this afternoon, Dearie?"

"You bet. We've nothing else to do."

"You fraud," said Honey, when she had hung up the receiver, "you said you had engagements."

"I tried to convey to you," observed Skinner, somewhat loftily, "that we couldn't dine at the Wilkinsons' before Sat.u.r.day. That covers it, I think."

According to Skinner's plans, the dinner at the Wilkinsons' was to be the big, climactic drive at the fortress of Willard Jackson's stubbornness.

As Skinner had reckoned, Mrs. Curmudgeon W. Jackson nosed out the paragraph in the morning paper, first thing.

"Who is this Mr. Skinner, Willard? Do you know him?"

"What Skinner?"

"William Manning Skinner."

"Never heard of him."

"He's of McLaughlin & Perkins, Inc.,--your old friends."

Jackson p.r.i.c.ked up his ears.

"What's he doing here? Does it say?"

"No."

"I know," said Jackson shrewdly. "He's out here after me." He chuckled. "They've been sending emissaries to get me back ever since I quit 'em. Even the partners came out, one at a time. That shows what they think of my trade."

"Skinner's got his wife with him."

"I don't blame him. It's a devilish mean business going on the road without some one to look after you." Jackson paused. "But he can't disguise his fine Italian hand that way. I know those fellows."

"She's some swell," said Mrs. Jackson. "Daughter of the late Archibald Rutherford, of Hastings-on-the-Hudson."

"That don't mean anything. The way they write it makes it _look_ aristocratic. Rutherford!--he might have been a butcher! And Hastings-on-the-Hudson! Well, they have butchers there as well as Astors!"

"Mebbe you're right."

"I'll bet you a new dress Skinner'll be after me to-day," said Jackson, folding his newspaper and preparing to leave for his office. "Trust your Uncle Dudley here--I know."

The very first words that greeted Jackson that night when he reached home were, "I get the dress, don't I?"

"How do you know?"

"Skinner didn't get after you to-day. Look!"

Mrs. Jackson held up the evening paper and read aloud. "'A belated honeymoon--that's what we're here for more than anything else,' said Mr. William Manning Skinner, of McLaughlin & Perkins, Inc., of New York, to a reporter this afternoon. The Skinners had just returned from a spin over beyond Minneapolis with the J. Matthews Wilkinsons--"

"The devil you say!" said Jackson, reaching over and taking the paper.

"Aw!" He chucked the paper aside. "That don't establish their social status any more than living in Hastings-on-the-Hudson or being a Rutherford. It don't amount to anything. It's just business. Fellows like Wilkinson, when some outsider is n't quite good enough socially and they want to swell his head without committing themselves, take him in their car or to the club. In that way they save their business faces without sacrificing their social faces. I know," he growled.

"But how did he get in with the Wilkinsons? They have n't any business."

"Wilkinson is in all sorts of things that n.o.body knows of but himself."

He glanced over the sub-caption. "Skinner sees no difference socially between the St. Paul and the New York people. Puts St. Paul first," he observed, "thanks for that." He read further. "'But the Western people are more frankly hospitable'!"

"Moonshine! Moonshine!" he commented. "Hospitality ain't a matter of location. You'll find generous people and devilish mean people, no matter where you go. That's soft soap. It reads well--but--I know."

"It don't look as if he'd have much time for you, Willard."

"He ain't through yet," said Jackson, lighting a stogie. "I'll bet you another dress that to-morrow--"

"Taken!"

Mrs. Jackson turned again to the paper.

"That girl knows how to _dress_, all right!"

But it was n't Honey's dress that stirred Mrs. Jackson's soul to the depths. These Skinners were hand in glove with the inaccessible Wilkinsons, and--the devil take it--Jackson was no longer a customer of McLaughlin & Perkins, Inc.

Skinner read the evening paper with great satisfaction. The inky seed disseminated through the press was, he felt, bound to take strong root in the fertile consciousness of Mrs. Curmudgeon W. Jackson, and therefrom was sure to react effectively upon the decidedly active consciousness of Jackson himself.

With this end in view, as per plan of campaign for the reclamation of Willard Jackson, Skinner had had himself interviewed on a subject dear and flattering to the Middle West, especially flattering to St. Paul.

He had written his "first impressions of St. Paul" on the way out from New York, and had permitted the same to be extracted by the reporters--with great cunning--from his modest and reluctant self.

Honey was present--designedly present--while the young newspaper men were quizzing Skinner, dressed in her very latest, which was carefully noted and described in the interview, for decorative purposes.