Skippy Bedelle Part 23

"How much money have you got?"

Snorky produced three quarters.

"I'll send it back to you if I don't return."

A light burst over Snorky, confirming his worst suspicions.

"Skippy," he said, seizing his arm, "you're running away! You're going on the stage!"

He had not thought of this, but he appropriated the suggestion at once by avoiding a denial.

"Snorky, old pal," he said solemnly, "stand by me now. When it's all over I'll write you."

"But, good Lord, Skippy--"

"Don't try to stop me. My mind's made up."

"But I say--"

"I've given my _word_," said Skippy tragically. "If I'm not back by eight o'clock to-morrow morning, mail this letter to my mother and give this to the Doctor. Good-bye. G.o.d bless you--and I'll pay you back the first money I earn."

CHAPTER XX

THE HEART OF A BRUNETTE

HE recovered the s...o...b..ush from under the window of Tabby, the young a.s.sistant house-master, and tucking it into his pocket, skirted the outer limits of the school, dodged behind a fence, and creeping on all-fours, made a wide detour via the pond and rejoined the high road to Trenton which lay five dusty miles away. Luckily the evening was overclouded and the shadows protecting. His problem was not simply to arrive at the Lafontaines' at exactly the hour but to arrive there with a cool and dignified appearance. It was hot, and the derby hat pressed down on the vaselined hair was hotter than anything about him, hotter even than the parched fields and the steaming asphalt which yielded to his feet.

"Gosh, I oughter have brought a towel," he said, when at the end of twenty minutes he stopped to remove his hat and allow the hot vapors to escape. He sat down and fanned himself vigorously. Then he took off his necktie and collar and placed them in his pocket, and finally shed his coat under favor of the night. He could scarcely distinguish the road beneath him, and several times only saved himself from sprawling on his nose by a convulsive grasping at a nearby fence. But what did the toil, the heat, or the terrors of the night matter? He was going to see her again. Not only that but he would come to her surrounded by the romance of a great danger run, just to sit in her presence, to hear her voice, to see in her eyes some tender recognition of what he had dared for her.

This was romance indeed!

A dog came savagely out of the night. How was he to know that a fence intervened? He ran a quarter of a mile and again sat down. It grew hotter; he was dripping from head to foot. A wagon or two went by, but he did not dare to ask for a ride, for fear of encountering some agent of the Doctor's secret police. For, perhaps, his absence was already discovered and the alarm had gone out.

The heat and the discomfort somewhat interfered with the free play of his imagination, but the quality of romance still kept with him.

"When I'm twenty-one," he said to himself again and again, in a vague defiance of all the hostile powers of Society. Only five years and six weeks intervened before the glowing horizon of liberty. Did she care?

Even that did not matter. She knew what the future held for him. The main thing, the thing to cling to, was that her heart was kind. Of that there could be no question. How gentle and how understanding she had been! He could come to her and tell her anything--absolutely anything!

"Good Lord, what a difference it makes to have some one you can trust,"

he said solemnly to the night. "Some one to work for!"

At nine o'clock he reached the outskirts of Trenton, and having cooled off, put on his collar and necktie. Then he stopped at a stationer's to ask his way. A large florid young woman, chewing gum, was behind the counter, patting down her oily chestnut curls.

"Say, can you tell me where the Lafontaines live?" he said with an extra polite bow.

Fortunately she knew and directed him.

"You're one of them Lawrenceville boys, ain't you?" she said, eyeing with curiosity the oozy ruffle of his hair.

Skippy was shocked at this easy discovery of his youth.

"Come off. I'm a member of the Princeton faculty," he said loftily.

"Well, I think you're one of them Lawrenceville boys," she said, following him to the door.

He waved back gaily and went skipping up the street. He arrived before the Lafontaine mansion with exactly five minutes to spare. The old Colonial house was set back in a wide plot and masked by convenient foliage. Skippy, pa.s.sing down the side wall, sheltered himself behind a bush, his heart pumping with excitement, and drew on the gloves which he had borrowed from Butcher Stevens. Then extracting the s...o...b..ush and cloth from his pocket, he busied himself hurriedly with removing from his trousers and shoes all traces of the dusty way he had come. This done, he hid the brush and cloth under the bush and straightened up.

Unfortunately either the last preparations or the terrific sentimental strain of facing his first call upon a member of the opposite s.e.x had so increased his temperature that his forehead was again covered with perspiration.

"Great w.i.l.l.i.e.s! I can't go in like this--if I only had a handkerchief--what am I to do?"

But just at the moment when he had improvised into a towel the most available part of his s.h.i.+rt, his heart stood still at hearing above him the following conversation:

"Mimi, you're a witch," said the voice of his sister, "I never would have believed it."

"Well, my dear, you wanted me to wake him up. I've done it. Goodness, I never saw any one go down so quickly. I really believe he's going to propose! If you could have seen his funny eyes when he told me that there was something he just _had_ to say to me."

"For heaven's sake keep it up. It's better than soap, Mimi. One look at his hands and I knew he was in love."

"My dear, what do you think--he's had my photograph for weeks--the one I gave you, of course. Now if that isn't a real romance. . . ."

"He ought to be spanked, that boy--stealing away from school!"

"My dear, he's told me all about his life's ambitions."

"What's that?"

"It's something about a bathtub--some sort of an invention that's going to revolutionize the bathtub industry."

"Then it must be the outside of a bathtub," said Clara with a sisterly laugh. "Mimi, I just must hear his proposal."

"You'll laugh and spoil it all."

"On my honor!"

Ten minutes later, Miss Mimi Lafontaine put on her kindliest smile as ushered in by the maid Mr. John C. Bedelle came magnificently into the room, spick and span, cool as the cuc.u.mber is credited to be at any temperature; an immaculate purple tie blooming under an unsullied collar, with only a slight pollen on the carefully-divided hair. How was she to know that, in five minutes, under the sting of betrayed confidence and broken illusions, a complete moral transformation had made of the urchin a man in the embryo, fired by the burning impulses of the deadliest hatred?

He did not stumble or wind himself up in the curtain or upset the bowl of goldfish on the slight etagere by the sofa. He came in with a manner that was so completely nonchalant that Miss Mimi was manifestly impressed.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Really, Jack, I'm beginning to suspect you're an old hand." _Page 140_]

"Why, Jack, you don't look as though you had _run_ at all," she said encouragingly.

"Oh, I picked up a buggy and took it easy," he said, seating himself and arranging the trouser crease with nicety. Then having perceived under the sofa the telltale slippers of Miss Clara Bedelle, he added, "I say, how did you ever keep it from Sis?"

"Oh, she thinks it's another caller," said Mimi, staring a little.