Skippy Bedelle Part 38

"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 s.e.x, 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 b.u.t.tonhook, 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 a.s.sistance. 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 d.a.m.ned spot. Then having wrung the limp ma.s.s, 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 x.x.xI

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 surrept.i.tiously 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.