Skippy Bedelle Part 27

"Oh," said Skippy relaxing. "With Miss Lafontaine? That was all a put-up game!"

Sam considered him and noting the fatuous smile shook his head and said:

"Well, bub, you're at the age when they fall fast and easy. Now listen to a few pearls of wisdom. Got your ears open?"

"Fire away, Sambo!"

"If you've _got_ to fall and you will--sure you will, don't shake your head--if you've got to fall, don't trail around on an old woman's skirts and get treated like a dog--fetch and carry stuff. Look the field over and pick out something young and grateful. Something easy. Something that'll look up to you. Let her love you. Be a hero. Savvy?"

"Huh! Girls give me a swift pain," said Skippy with a curl of his upper lip.

"Wait and count the pains," said Sam with a grin. "You're at a bad age.

Well, I have spoken. What's the use of having an older brother if he can't do you some good?"

It being only four o'clock, Skippy decided to look up the Gutter Pup, who with the Egghead, represented the school contingent at Gates Harbor.

Lazelle, more familiarly known as the Gutter Pup, Gazelle, Razzle-dazzle and the White Mountain Canary according to the fighting weight of the addressee, lived just across lots.

With three months' respite ahead from the tyranny of the chapel bell, three months of home cooking, fifteen dollars in his pocket and nothing to do but to romp like a colt over pastures of his own choosing, Skippy went hilariously over the lawns, hurdled a hedge and hallooed from below the well-known window.

"Hi there, old Razzle-Dazzle, stick your head out!"

A second and a third peremptory summons bringing no response, he went cautiously around the porch.

"Why it's Jack Bedelle," said the Gutter Pup's sister from a hammock.

"Gracious, I never should have known you!"

"h.e.l.lo yourself," said Skippy, acknowledging with a start the difference a year had brought to the tomboy he had known. "Say, you've done some growing up yourself."

He ended in a long drawn out whistle which Miss Lazelle smilingly accepted as a tribute.

"I say, Bess, where's the old Gazelle?"

"Charlie? Why he's gone out canoeing with Kitty Rogers."

"What!"

Miss Lazelle repeated the information. Skippy was too astounded to remember his manners. He clapped his hat on his head, sunk his fists in his pockets and went out the gate. The Gutter Pup spending his time like that! He made his way to the club where more shocks awaited him. On the porch was the Egghead feeding ice cream to Mimi Lafontaine. On the tennis courts Puffy Ellis and Tacks Brooker were playing mixed doubles!

Skippy could not believe his eyes. What sort of an epidemic was this anyhow? He went inside and immediately a victrola started up a two-step and lo and behold, there before him whirling ecstatically about the floor, held in feminine embraces, were Happy Mather and Joe Crocker, the irreconcilables of the old gang!

"h.e.l.lo, Skippy, shake a foot," said Happy Mather encouragingly. "Want to be introduced?"

"Excuse me," said Skippy loftily. "What's happened to the crowd? Can't you think of anything better than wasting your time like this?"

"Wake up!" said Happy, making a dive for a partner. "You're walking in your sleep."

Skippy went sadly out and down to the bridge where he perched on a pile and contemplated the swirling currents with melancholy. What had happened? After an hour of bitter rumination he rose heavily and engrossed in his own thoughts pa.s.sed two ice-cream parlors, utterly forgetful of the sudden wealth in his pockets. On the way home he perceived something white and pink moving lightly in airy freedom, while at her side laden to the shoulder with sweaters, rugs, a camp stool and a beach umbrella was Sam. He came rebelliously to the home porch and then hastily ducked around to the side entrance, for the porch was in full possession of Clara who was entertaining a group of men. He sought to gain his room noiselessly via the back parlor and came full upon Tootsie who was showing a book of photographs to a pudgy, red-haired boy, who blushed violently at his intrusion and stood up, until he had acknowledged the embarra.s.sed introduction and escaped.

"What in thunder's gotten into everybody anyhow?" he said to himself disconsolately. "Girls, girls everywhere. The place is full of them and everybody twosing, twosing! What in Sam Hill is a regular fellow to do!

Gee, but it's going to be a rotten summer!"

So in this melancholy seclusion, gazing out of his window, at the green landscape vexed by the omnipresent flash of white skirts, uneasily conscious that a crisis had arrived in his social progress that would have to be met, Skippy began to commune with himself and likewise to ruminate. His first contact with female perfidy had destroyed half his faith in woman; never again could he trust a brunette. Some day he might permit himself to be appreciated by a blonde, but it would take a lot of convincing. But it is one thing to have fixed principles and another to resist the contagions of a whole society. Virtue is one thing but loneliness is another.

"What the deuce is a regular fellow going to do?" he said. But already his resentment had given way to a brooding anxiety. All at once, he remembered that he too had loved. Something that had been dormant awoke, as the touch of spring awoke the great outdoors.

"For I must love some one, And it may as well be you."

The refrain haunted him. Had the time come when even he would have to descend?

CHAPTER XXIII

THE BLONDE OF THE SPECIES

SUNDAY was a nerve-racking problem in days when the New England tradition still held. There was no fishing, no tennis, no baseball, and no golf. Picnics were taboo. There was of course a large amount of eating to be done, but after fish-b.a.l.l.s, griddle cakes, and pork and beans for breakfast, a heavy sermon, and a heavier roast beef for dinner, the long afternoon had to be lived through in a sort of penitential expiation. One dozen fed-to-bursting, painfully primped young human colts, ranging from fifteen to seventeen years of age, gathered in the Gutter Pup's barn and mournfully debated the eternal question of what to do.

"It's too cold to sneak up to the old swimming hole," said Tacks disconsolately.

"Why not have a few rounds with the mitts?" said the Gutter Pup eagerly.

"In these duds?" said Happy Mather, who preferred to stand because when he sat down the Sunday collar pinched his throat. "Nothing doing! Thank you, but my governer's hand is still strong!"

"We might organize a Browning Society," said Puffy Ellis, who came from Boston.

"Bright boy!"

"Oh, well, since we 're all dressed up and nowhere to go, we might as well do the society racket and call on the sweet things."

"Girls!" said Skippy, sarcastically. "My aunt's cat's pants! Joe, what's got into you! You used to be human last summer. Girls! Girls! I vote we all go out and pick a bunch of dandelions for Joe Crocker to carry round."

"Hold up," said the Gutter Pup. "You give me an idea."

"If it's got anything to do with skirts," said Skippy, "au revoir and likewise good-by. I resign."

"Shut up! When Razzle-dazzle starts to think, give him a chance," said Happy Mather. "Who asked your opinion? You're nothing but a tadpole, anyhow."

"Well, what's the idea?" said Tacks.

"It's a good one," said the Gutter Pup slowly. "It's a gag we used to pull off in the old Murray Hill Gang, the winter I put Spider Martin away in seven rounds. Spider was no great shakes with the mitts but he had some bright ideas. This is one of them. How many are we?"

"Twelve."

"Just right. Only it's got to be played dead serious, no horseplay, kiddin', or rough stuff."

Just half an hour later Miss Connie Brown, aged sixteen, who was yawning over a novel on the chaise-lounge of her bedroom, was electrified into action by the announcement that two gentlemen callers were waiting for her in the parlor. Miss Connie was in excellent health, weighing one hundred and sixty pounds, rather freckled, and quite accustomed to watch her girl friends enjoying themselves in the ballroom. She bounded down the stairs and arrived, slightly out of breath, to find the Gutter Pup and Skippy stiffly erect.

"Allow me to present my friend, Mr. Bedelle!" said the Gutter Pup in the correct tones of an undertaker.