Skippy Bedelle Part 52

"Here, that's not square," he said to himself angrily, torn by a mighty temptation. He leaned over and closed the book abruptly. The next moment he was staring at three gilded words that confronted him with the suddenness of Belshazzar's vision:

THE CHAP RECORD

A sudden brain storm swept over the emotional nature of Mr. Skippy Bedelle, of the sort which in modern legal etiquette is held to excuse all crimes. He knew what a chap record was. He had found one in his sister Clara's bureau and had been lavishly paid for his silence. He opened it violently and this is what he read:

HARRY FELTON. June 30-Sept. 6th. Good-looking in a soapy sort of way, but dull: Good dancer, agonizingly slow at a twosing. Takes what you give him and is grateful. Good for last minute calls.

JOE RANDOLPH. July 2d-August 6th. Awfully lavish and liberal. Spoiled and hard to keep in place. Useful later. Salt away for College Prom.

CHARLES BROWNRIGGER. Xmas to--. Terribly proper and easily shocked.

Every girl an angel. Seeking a good influence. Good only for concerts and lectures.

CHARLIE DULER. Easter vacation. Professional flirt. Tried hard for him but no go. On to all the old tricks. Too much alike.

HECTOR CHISOLM. May 3 to May 6th. Three day rush fast and furious. Nice teeth and eyes, cold English style in daytime but wilts rapidly in the moonlight. Dreadfully exciting. Au revoir!

Having thus wandered through the carnage, Skippy braced himself and read:

JACK BEDELLE. August 20th--Dreadfully young and conceited, feed him on flattery--nice eyes but funny nose--poor conversationalist but works hard. Dreadful dancer. Pretends indifference but awfully soft in spots.

Hooked him in twenty minutes--

Skippy laid the book down in his lap and glanced up the beach which showed no signs of an advancing parasol. Then he looked at his watch which indicated exactly the half hour. He sat a long moment thinking.

Then he opened the book and at the paragraph devoted to him he added:

"_Easy to hook is hard to hold._"

But this did not satisfy him. He stood up and suddenly inspired sunk to his knees and hurriedly gathered together the sand into a mound capable of burying Miss Vivi's little body. Across it he laid the opened book.

At its head he placed the box of chocolates as a headstone. Then below he wrote in the sand (symbol indeed of transient loves):

SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF VIOLET BALOU SLAIN BY HER OWN HAND August 27th, 1896.

Then as a masterly afterthought he added savagely:

GONE AND NOW FORGOTTEN

Mr. Skippy Bedelle then wriggled away through the sand dunes just as Miss Vivi Balou with malice aforethought came up the beach accompanied by Mr. Charles Brownrigger.

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII

THE PHILOSOPHICAL ATt.i.tUDE

IT happened on the day before school opened; at that moment when Skippy returning from his first sentimental summer had no other thought than to rest up from the fatigue of the vacation and devote his activities to the serious business of life. There were the freshman (a discouraging lot) to be properly educated, taught to punctuate their sentences with a humble "sir," "if you please" and "thank you;" there was a certain score to be settled with Al at the Jigger Shop and the basis of a new credit to be argued, there was the prize room on the third floor overlooking the campus to be re-decorated with the loot of the summer, and one crucial question to be decided forthwith:

"Shall we start training now or gorge ourselves for just one more day?"

"The Jiggers are peach, soft and creamy," said Snorky with a pensive look. "But we should set an example you know, old top, and all that sort of thing."

"Keerect, we must."

"I can see the crowd up at Conover's putting away the pancakes," said Snorky insidiously.

"Be firm," said Skippy, returning to his trunk.

"It isn't only the Jiggers," said Snorky, who sometimes practised virtue but without the slightest enthusiasm, "it's--it's those eclairs--never tasted anything like them, big, fat, luscious, oozing with cream--"

"Shut up," said Skippy indignantly. "Where's your house spirit?"

"Can't a fellow be human?" said Snorky in an aggrieved tone.

"All right, all right--but put your mind on other things," said Skippy nervously.

He disengaged an armful from the bottom of his trunk and spreading it on the window seat, contemplated the touch of many feminine hands with an expression that was as cynically blase as that of the traditional predatory bachelor. Whenever Skippy found a mood too elusive to be expressed in words, his lips instinctively resorted to boyhood's musical outlet. His eyes traveled appraisingly over sofa cus.h.i.+ons, picture frames, knitted neckties and flags that represent those select inst.i.tutions where young ladies are finished off. He began to whistle,

"I don't want to play in your yard, I don't like you any more . . ."

"My, you're a cold-hearted brute," said Snorky, in whom perhaps the spirit of envy was strong.

"I am," said Skippy unctuously, "and I am going to be brutier, take a tip from yours truly, _Moony_."

He disposed of half a dozen cus.h.i.+ons, draped two flags and carefully placed three photographs amid the gallery on his bureau.

"Do you think that's honorable?" said Snorky resentfully.

"Scalps, that's all!" said Skippy with a grandiloquent wave of his hand.

"I get you. Heart whole and fancy free etcetera etceteray?"

"Every time."

"Since when?" said Snorky wickedly.

Skippy allowed this to pa.s.s, but having pensively contemplated the effect produced by the addition of Miss Dolly Travers, Miss Jennie Tupper and Miss Vivi Balou to the adoring galaxy of the past, he swung a leg over the table and a.s.suming that newly acquired manner of a man of the world, which was specially galling to his chum, announced,

"Snorky, old horse, you play it wrong."

"I do, eh?"

"You do. There's nothing in that fussing game. Women, my boy, are our inferiors."