Skippy Bedelle Part 58

Skippy read and suddenly put down the paper. Only two things came to his mind--wedding immediate and she had not even written him.

At this most auspicious moment, Nuisance came gamboling around the house.

"Hi, Skippy, old sport, what ye doin'?"

Dennis de Brian de Boru looked at Snorky and then simultaneously each sat down and retired into an expectant audience.

Nuisance frolicked enthusiastically up for his victim and then stopped.

He had just caught Skippy's expression. He stopped and suddenly looked at the ground. He _knew_!

Slowly, carefully, warily with his eyes on Skippy he began a strategic withdrawal. Skippy moved stealthily forward, picking up his steps as a rat terrier does. Nuisance slunk away, calculating the distance to the corner of the house. Skippy increased the pace, drawing ominously nearer.

Then Finnegan's shrill voice cried:

"Sic him, Skippy!"

The next moment, Nuisance, panic-stricken, was scuttling for his life, with Skippy roaring at his heels.

And just back of the lonely stretches of the d.i.c.kinson, Skippy fell upon him.

That night Skippy, wise by disillusionment, confided his sorrows to a diary which began as follows:

"What I don't know about women, ain't worth knowing. Resolved; if any loving is going to be done, they can do the loving."

But that of course is still another story. . . .

THE END