Skippy Bedelle Part 48

"Not like Maude Adams!"

There was a sudden silence and all eyes were turned expectantly toward him as to a manifestly superior intelligence. Finally the swinger of dumb-bells voiced the question.

"But why?"

Skippy considered.

"Too much like Maude Adams," he said cryptically.

Vivi looked at him in admiration.

"How clever, I never thought of that."

"Well, I'm just frantic about Maude Adams!" said the athletic Miss Barrons stubbornly.

"Because you like Maude Adams," said Skippy as a clincher.

By one bold stroke he had become a personage and what is more perceived that he had become one. Different topics were served up for his judgment. He p.r.o.nounced flatly against colleges for women, woman suffrage and bobbed hair, predicted the election of Mr. Bryan and the probable division of the United States into four separate republics.

Even Snorky Green, who was floundering along on the subject of blazers _vs._ sweaters, was impressed, and as for Miss Cantillon, she tried to stir up a little commotion by introducing the subject of The Lady from Narragansett who had removed freckles by watermelon rinds, but the effect was tepid and she relapsed into a listener.

"Say, where did you get it?" said Snorky in a whisper as they pa.s.sed out to the veranda.

"Get what?"

"All this bright boy stuff! Why you're the little boy orator yourself."

"I'll tell you how it's done sometime," said Skippy magnificently.

"Do you like views?" said Vivi, coming to him as a moth to the brightest flame.

"That depends," said Skippy, who being still in a mood of negation was unwilling to concede anything.

Miss Vivi accepted this as acquiescence and, it being early moonlight and dangerous underfoot, took his hand to lead him safely around the flower beds. Skippy having just discovered the secret to success encased himself in indifference and waited developments.

"Isn't it romantic! Don't you _love_ it?" she said, arrived at a little summer house that jutted out over the darkling waters.

"It's rather nice," said Skippy, sternly repressing his emotional tendencies.

Vivi now ostentatiously disengaged her hand.

"Please."

"Is it safe now?" said Skippy anxiously.

"How perfectly horrid of you," said the young lady in pretended indignation. "You make fun of everything, even the most sacred things."

The relevancy of this was lost on Skippy who condescended to say,

"View isn't half bad if the moon weren't so dreadfully lopsided."

"Unsentimental wretch! I suppose you want to go back?" said Vivi reproachfully.

"Are there mosquitoes?"

"Just for that I'll keep you here until you're eaten up," said Vivi, plucking a spray of honeysuckle and inhaling it with a sigh. "Isn't it wonderful, don't you adore honeysuckle in the moonlight?" she added, transferring it to his inspection.

Skippy inhaled it loudly and announced that it was all right.

"Jelly fish," said Vivi throwing it away indignantly.

Skippy resented "jelly fish."

"Well you are! I never saw such a cold calculating unemotional brute.

You're nothing but a great big icy brain."

Skippy thought of the Roman and a hundred flunkings.

"Better pull in on the infant phenom--Snorky might hear of it," he thought.

"Oh, I like it here," he said in a more romantic tone.

"Really?"

"Yep."

A long silence and Vivi inhaled another sprig of honeysuckle and devoured the moon.

"How long you going to stay?"

"About a week."

"Oh!"

Another silence.

"You're so different."

"How?"

"Don't know but you are--quite, quite different. You seem so much older than Arthur."

"Well that all depends," said Skippy, ready to draw on his imagination.

"You've seen a lot of life, haven't you?"

"Yes I suppose so."

"I saw that--in your hands."