Skippy Bedelle Part 24

"Really, Jack, I'm beginning to suspect you're an old hand."

"Well, of course this isn't the first time," he said, leaning back and sinking his fists in his trousers pockets.

Miss Mimi gave a gasp of astonishment.

"Well, I never, and all you said to me too about the photograph and the letters you tore up."

"Did you really believe all that?" said Skippy with a smile that seemed to cut across his face. His heart was bursting; yet the task of revenge was sweet. "You know Sidell and I are old hunting partners."

Miss Lafontaine sat upright, forgetting everybody in the dismay of her discovery.

"Jack Bedelle, do you mean to say that it was all fixed up between you two?"

Again Mr. John C. Bedelle smiled.

"Oh, we know a trick or two, even if we're still in school."

Miss Mimi's look was not such as is generally ascribed to the gentler s.e.x. She bit her lip and said furiously:

"You just tell Mr. Sidell--" and then, quite suffocated with rage, she stopped and flung a little fan, furiously, across the room.

"Now I see her as she is," thought Skippy with a healing delight. Aloud he added: "Oh, if you really want to know the truth about Sidell, just ask Sis. She probably put him up to the whole game."

Now this was rather crude, and at another time Miss Lafontaine would have detected the artifice and consequently divined the whole fabrication, but at present she was quite too angry, particularly when she realized that her best friend was a witness to her discomfiture.

"Just what do you mean by that?" she said angrily.

"Why, they've been sweet on each other for a couple of years," he said, with malice aforethought. "Guess you're not on to Sis. She'd steal anything with pants on that came within a mile of her. Ask her sometime about the mash notes the plumber's boy used to shoot up to her window, or perhaps you'd better not, it gets her too hot. But anyway I advise you to keep your eyes open." He rose, for the sudden s.h.i.+fting of the slippers back of the sofa warned him it was time to depart.

"Good-bye, Mimi," he said carelessly. "Two can play the same game, remember that."

Then, calculating the moment, he b.u.mped into the etagere, upsetting the goldfish, and as the dripping figure of Miss Clara Bedelle emerged with a scream, Mr. Skippy Bedelle, Chesterfieldian to the last, departed saying:

"He laughs best who laughs last."

He arrived at the little stationery shop without having seen where he had been going, his eyes blinded with rage, his mind filled with bitter imprecations. Of his night's infatuation not a vestige remained except the weakness of disillusionment and the suffering of a proud nature.

"Well, Professor, how was your girl?"

He looked up to see the dark-complexioned lady still methodically chewing away.

"She's like all the rest," he thought darkly, "fooling some man, I bet."

Then his eyes fell on a group of photographs in the shape of postal cards; a wonderful a.s.sortment of fleshlings, of young ladies who dazzle and display abundant charms before the footlights. He remembered that an explanation was due to Snorky, and that the explanation would have to be very convincing. One photograph fascinated him; it was so like the way Tina would look, if there were a Tina!

The young lady in graceful tights, legs crossed in a figure four, elbow resting on a marble column, her chin supported by the index finger, was smiling out at him with a full dental smile.

"Say, do a fellow a favor?" he said.

"Sure for a nice boy like you I will," she said, encouragingly.

"Just sign across here--it's a joke."

"Oh, it's a joke?"

"Yes, of course. Sign 'Faithfully yours,'--no--'Fondly yours.'"

"Fondly yours," said the gum chewer, writing with a flourish.

"Tina."

"T--I--N--A."

"Turner."

"Indeed, I'll not!" said the girl with sudden indignation. "Turner's my name, and I can't have any such picture--"

"All right, all right, make it 'Tanner' then."

With the photograph as evidence safely bestowed in an inner pocket, he set out on the long homeward trudge. The weakness was gone, his imagination was now all on the story he would have to tell Snorky.

Heavens, what had been crowded into one short hour;--love, treachery, revenge and triumph! Once a sudden rush of tears caught him, but he fought down the mood. The test had been soul-trying, but the victory was his. So he marched along, blowing out his courage as he chanted a defiant marching song and if Providence had but endowed him with a tail, he would have carried it proudly like a banner as he stalked across the campus and found his way into the Kennedy.

"Who is it?" said a startled voice.

"Hush, it's Skippy."

"Thank G.o.d."

Snorky jumped up and caught him in his arms with such genuine emotion that Skippy was profoundly touched, so touched that he almost made a clean breast of this affair--almost but not quite.

"What happened? You look all shot to pieces," said Snorky, holding up a candle and gazing at him in awe.

"It's all over," said Skippy stonily.

"Over."

"She'd have had to give up her career and--and I'm too young yet to support her."

"Honest, Skippy?" said Snorky, with a lingering doubt.

"Here's all that's left to me now," said Skippy, and he brought forth the photograph.

CHAPTER XXI