Skippy Bedelle Part 14

"Huh! You didn't think I bit on that! Well, how're you going to clean 'em up? They destroy 'em in Cuba with kerosene--I've been reading up. Is it something like that?"

"Destroy them, why destroy them?" said Skippy reprovingly.

"Why not?"

"If you destroy mosquitoes you destroy your income, you poor b.o.o.b," said Skippy with his superior manner. "Let 'em live--who profits? I do."

Snorky rose and produced the Bible.

"Come on," he said, in a fever of excitement. "I'm ready. Give me the oath."

"You'll take the oath on my own terms!" said Skippy, looking at him fixedly.

"What do you mean, terms?"

"Snorky, it's so big it may take years of investigation, you understand--"

"Sure."

"This time I'm not giving up any fifty-one per cent."

"Let her go!"

"And if any one goes in they go in on a salary!"

"Oho! I see."

"Well?"

"All right, I'll swear," said Snorky, after a brief wrestling between his curiosity and his financial instincts.

"It may be years working out," said Skippy sadly. "Maybe our children will live to see it; but Snorky, some day, I'm telling you, when the idea is perfected, the mosquito is going to starve to death!"

Snorky, without waiting to be prompted, hurriedly took an oath to guard the secret from man woman and child and called down the scourges of Jehovah on his nearest of kin if he should ever prove false.

"Snorky," said Skippy, folding his arms behind him and spreading his legs after the manner ascribed to the famous Corsican, "where do mosquitoes bite you the most?"

"Golly! Where don't they?" said Snorky, who, thus reminded, began to scratch back of his ears.

"Where do they bite where you can't hear them coming?"

"Legs and ankles," said Snorky instantly.

"Bright boy--you're getting closer."

"Danged if I can see it."

"Protect the ankles and the mosquito starves--am I right?"

"Hurry up," said Snorky, who by this time recognized that the first reasoning processes were simply eliminatory.

"That was my problem," said Skippy, frowning impressively. "Here is the answer--this is how it came to me." He went to the bureau and pa.s.sed his hand into a sock, two fingers projecting through the devastated regions.

"What do you call this?"

"That--that's my sock."

"You call 'em hole-proof socks," said Skippy, ignoring the aspersion.

"You get it? You don't? Suppose we change it, suppose we use the same organization but call it--Mosquito-Proof Socks."

"Mosquito-Proof Socks!" said Snorky in a whisper.

Skippy, satisfied at the staggering effect produced, stood with a smile waiting for the full result.

"But, Skippy, is it--possible?" said Snorky faintly when he had brought his lower jaw back under control.

"That's not the way to look at it," said Skippy impatiently. "Is the idea A No. 1, or is it not?"

"The idea? My aunt's cat's pants--the idea!" said Snorky all in a breath, "Mosquito-Proof Socks! Why, it's--it's--it's--" But here Snorky stopped, nonplussed, having exhausted his supply of adjectives on the Foot Regulator.

"It is!" said Skippy firmly.

"But won't they be too heavy?"

"What the deuce--"

"Why, they'd have to be regular bullet-proof, wouldn't they?"

"Say! What do you think I'm talking about--Tin Socks?"

"Why, I thought--"

"Listen! This is the way you get at it," said Skippy, walking up and down in ponderous concentration but pausing from time to time to dip into the cheese. "You begin by looking at it from the point of view of the mosquito. A mosquito has got nerves, hasn't he, just like a horse or a cat or a bullfrog?"

"Sure he has."

"What frightens a mosquito most?"

"Is it a joke?" said Snorky thoughtfully.

"Green--"

"I apologize," said Snorky hastily, and he brought out a bottle of sarsaparilla.

"A horse shies at a bit of paper; a sneeze will scare a cat, won't it?

Well, then, what will scare a mosquito--it's all there!"

"Well, what _will_ scare a mosquito?" said Snorky, wide-eyed.