Skippy Bedelle Part 32

"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 la.s.so.

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, pa.s.sing 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 G.o.d 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 a.s.sociation 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 hea.r.s.e! 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 terpsich.o.r.ean a.s.sistance 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 Sat.u.r.days 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 Sat.u.r.day, 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."