CHAPTER XXXV The Scalp Hunter SKIPPY in his sentimental progress had now reached the point where if he could not control the impulses of his sentiments he could at least review the past with some instructive profit.

"Girls are queer things, aren't they?" he said ruminatively to Snorky Green, for the mood of confidence was on him.

"Queerer and queerier," said Snorky, considering the bosom of last night's dress shirt with a view to future service.

"They get you before you know it and as soon as they get you they worry the life out of you. One way or the other they start to making you miserable just as soon as you show them you've fallen for them. Now why?"

"Woman has no sense of gratitude," said Snorky, who had heard the phrase from a brother who had suffered.

"And you can't be friends with them—well you know, just friends."

"I know," said Snorky heavily.

"What gets me," said Skippy, "is why we fall and fall and fall."

"Habit."

"Well, perhaps."

"Sure, habit, that's all."

"But this is the queerest of all," said Skippy, yawning and stretching his arms deliciously. "How darned fine you feel when it's all over. You go to bed thinking the bottom's been kicked out of things and you wake up feeling so Jim dandy rip-roarin' chuck full of happiness that you wonder what's happened, and then you remember that you're cured! Your time's your own. You can wear, do and say what you like, spend your money on yourself. You're free! Now it is queer, isn't it?"

"Like having a tooth out?" said Snorky.

"Exactly."

"Say, what story did you cook up about me to Margarita Tupper?" said Skippy, tying the white cravat for the sixth time.

"Bygones is bygones," said Snorky evasively.

"You must have had me robbin' a coach or skinning a cat," said Skippy encouragingly.

"You were throwing yourself away there, old top," said Snorky, avoiding the direct answer. "Why in another week you'd a been reading little Rollo and taking to crocheting—a girl who lisps like that, too! Whatever was eating you, anyhow?"

"She talked like a shower bath," said Skippy unfeelingly, "but her eyes were lovely. Well, that's over."

"What's the use? You'll fall again."

"Never," said Skippy firmly. Then he qualified it. "That is, not in the same way."

"There ain't no two ways."

"Sure there is. It's like swimming. You can dive in or you can sit on the bank and splash with your toes—Savvy?"

"Ha! ha!"

"Wait and see. I know a thing or two."

Twenty minutes later, having assumed the full glories of evening dress (with studs of the good old-fashioned style that remained anchored), they departed for dinner at the Balous across the way.

"Say, put me on," said Skippy, who like all artists of the imagination was seized with an uncontrollable nervousness before facing an audience. "Who's in the party?"

"Only Charlie and Vivi."

"Vivi?"

"Real name's Violet but she's dressed it up."

"What's she like? What's her line?"

"Stiff as a ramrod—prim as an old maid, conversation strictly educational."

"Well, what does she look like?"

"Flabby as a cart-horse."

"Say, what the devil—"

"Grub's o.k. and there'll be fun after," said Snorky by way of justification.

"How's the old folks?"

"Mr. Balou? He's a terror, gives you the willies. If he doesn't freeze you the old girl will."

Skippy's traditional scepticism of any statement with the Snorky stamp would have warned him at any other time. But this being in a way a new experience in strange waters, his nervousness got the better of him. Halfway up the driveway he plucked Snorky's sleeve.

"Listen."

"Let go me arm you chump."

"What do you say to them?"

"Say to whom?"

"Mr. and Mrs."

"Talk about the weather, you ignoramus."

"Sure I know that, but afterwards, at dinner, what do you talk about there?"

"Don't worry, that's what girls are for."

Despite which advice, Skippy nervously ran over his conversational ammunition. There was of course Maude Adams to begin with. He tried hard to think of some book he had read—some work of sufficient dullness to serve up to this blue stocking atmosphere.

"Stop shootin' your cuff," said Snorky, applying his finger to the bell. "Don't you know anything about society?"

"Who's nervous?" said Skippy indignantly.

His backbone stiffened to the consistency of the white manacle that imprisoned his throat, he brushed the slight powder of the dust from the shining patent leathers, which in the fashion of the day extended in long pointed toes, shot back his cuffs for the twentieth time, felt surreptitiously to assure himself that his part was functioning properly and slid behind Snorky Green as he entered the parlor.

Something that was neither prim nor stiff nor in the least resembled a cart-horse bore down on them with a swish of ruffled skirts.

"Hello, Arthur, how nice of you to come. Dad and Mumsy are out so we're all to ourselves," said Miss Vivi Balou. "Mr. Bedelle? Oh I've heard a lot about you!"

"Really now, what do you mean?" said Skippy, with a long breath of relief.

Miss Balou held his hand just an extra minute as she said this, looking up into his face with an expression of the greatest interest. She was just over five feet, of the dreaded species of brunettes, with a thin, upward pointing little nose and the brightest of eyes.

"Oh I know a terrible lot," she said, giving to her mischievous glance just the slightest, most complimentary shade of apprehension.

Mr. Skippy Bedelle grew two inches toward the ceiling and looked for a mirror.

Two strictly plain young ladies, roommates of Miss Balou's from Farmington, with large black sash bows in their hair, were introduced as Miss Barrons and Miss Cantillon.

"Elsa Barrons is perfectly wonderful with the dumb-bells, look at her forearm, and Fanny isn't good looking but awfully clever," said Miss Balou in a whisper which was already confidential.

Brother Charles now sauntered in and shook hands with the magnificent condescension of a sophomore.

"Have a cigarette before dinner?"

He flashed a silver case and tendered it to Snorky, who being unprepared, hesitated, and took one.

"Cigarette?"

"Love to but I'm in training," said Skippy.

Charles, having arrived at the age when everything should weigh heavily upon a sophisticated appetite, bored with his sister, bored with sister's plain looking friends and bored with sister's beaux, retired to the fireplace, where he draped himself on the mantelpiece and looked properly bored with himself, an illusion of greatness which was peculiarly impressive to tadpole imaginations.

The arduities of the opening conversation were fortunately interrupted by the announcement of dinner and Skippy, with Maude Adams in reserve, found himself at table between Miss Balou and the swinger of dumb-bells.

"You're a Princeton man?" said Miss Barrons after several long breaths.

Skippy apportioned the compliment to his manly air and the magnificent lines of the dress suit.

"No, I'm Yale. That is I'm preparing," he said carelessly, and hoping that Snorky wasn't listening he added: "Family didn't want me to go in too young, you know."

"Oh yes, I know," said Miss Barrons with an appreciative glance at his precocious brow. "I think that's much better too. You don't have half as good a time if you go to college too young."

"Eighteen's about right," said Skippy in a more mature manner.

The subject being exhausted Skippy counted up the forks while his companion, to appear at ease, asked for the salt to put in her soup.

"Do you know Jim Fisher?" she said suddenly. "He's going to Yale next year."

Skippy did not know Jim Fisher.

"I wonder if you know a perfectly dandy girl?"

"Who's that?"

"Alice Parks."

Skippy did not know Alice Parks, though she lived in New York City. Likewise with a growing feeling of his profound social ignorance, he successively admitted that he did not know Cornelia Baxter, Frances Bowen or Harry Fall. Whereupon Miss Barrons abandoned him to converse with Charles who did know Alice Parks who was so attractive and Harry Fall who had such a strong character.

"What the devil is there to talk about," said Skippy to himself as he fidgeted with the soup. "What an awful bore society is."

There was Maude Adams, but how was he to get to her?

"I'm just crazy about harps," said Miss Cantillon, who was clever. "I think they're wonderful."

"Harps—oh yes," said Charles Balou.

Miss Cantillon appealed to the table.

"Do you like them better than violins?" said Miss Barrons doubtfully.

"Oh much better!"

"They're too big," said Snorky wisely.

"Yes, that is the trouble. It's a perfect shame too. They are too big to carry round but they are so melodious. I don't like the piano—it's so cold—"

While the conversation raged on the proper classification of musical instruments, Miss Balou turned from Snorky to Skippy and looked him once more in the eyes with her interested glance.

"Yes, I've heard a lot about you," she said with a knowing look.

"Really now?"

"You're a perfectly ghastly flirt," she said, lowering her voice. "You give a girl a terrific rush for a week or two and then pop off without even saying good-bye. Never mind though. I'm warned."

Again the look, the interested look of trying to discover the secret of his fascination. It was quite unlike the way any other girl had ever looked at him. Other girls looked at you side-wise or averted their eyes when they met yours. But this was different. It was mocking, impertinent, insinuating, but it did not displease him. He saw that he had made an impression, an instantaneous impression. He mystified her perhaps but he interested her intensely. For the first time he had conquered with a look.

"Who told you?"

"That's telling."

"I'll bet I know."

"Bet you don't."

"Bet I do."

"What'll you bet?"

"Two pounds of chocolates against a necktie."

"Done, who is it?"

"Some one here."

"Nope. You've lost."

"Who then?"

"Some one who knows Dolly Travers," said Vivi with a mocking smile.

"Oh!"

"Brute," said Vivi in the greatest admiration.

"Really I—"

"Now don't be modest—I hate modest men. It makes it twice as bad. She's very attractive, isn't she?"

"Very," said Skippy, feeling every inch a man.

"But she's rather young—for you, isn't she?" said Vivi artfully.

"They put glasses on cows in Russia," said Miss Cantillon importantly. She had a reputation as a brilliant conversationalist to uphold.

This assertion woke up the table.

"Cows?"

"Glasses?"

"Fanny dear, how excruciating!"

Even the sophomore was surprised into expressing his incredulity.

"Colored glasses on account of the glare of the snow," said Miss Cantillon.

"Fanny!"

"Fact, in Siberia. I read it in the papers."

"Cows can't live in the snow."

"But Siberia isn't all snow."

"Most of it is."

"Isn't it wonderful the things she knows?" said Vivi admiringly. "Do you like brainy women?"

"That depends," said Skippy while he stopped to consider. "I don't know any."

"Oh what a dreadful cynical remark!" said Vivi with another admiring look. "Heavens, I shall be frightened to death what I say to you. I'm sure you're awfully clever yourself. Perhaps I'll have a chance. Clever men hate clever women, don't they?"

"There is certainly something about my particular style of beauty that's bowled her over," thought Skippy to himself.

"Oh I don't know," he said, fatuously unconscious of the virtues he conceded to himself. "Dolly Travers was quite clever, you know."

"Brute!" said Miss Balou for the second time.

"Oh come now—"

"Do you know what I think about you?"

"What do you think?"

"I think you'd be lots of excitement at a house party," said Miss Vivi, shaking her head. "Just for a few days. I think you'd give a girl the grandest sort of a rush, but as for believing a word you said—never!"

"What do you mean?" said Skippy, immensely puffed up.

"It shows in your eyes," said Vivi with a look of having at last deciphered the mystery. "Besides, girls have spoiled you. You have had things too easily. No wonder you're conceited."

Miss Cantillon was discoursing brilliantly on a crow that had been struck by lightning in Oklahoma and had fallen into a wheat field and set fire to the grain, which had precipitated a conflagration which had necessitated calling out the fire departments of two counties.

"You're offended now," said Vivi in a contrite whisper.

"Some one's given you an awfully bad opinion of me," said Skippy stiffly, frowning to show the displeasure he did not feel.

"Well it's true, isn't it?"

"It is not!"

"How about Jennie Tupper?"

"Oh that!" said Skippy burying the memory with a wave of his hand.

"You see you are a brute! Well I don't mind. I like your hands."

Skippy took a precautionary glance at the ends of his baseball fingers and then allowed them to come to rest on the tablecloth.

"Now you're trying to jolly me," he said astutely.

"No. I always notice hands the first thing. They tell so much about your character. I saw yours at once."

"You can read hands?" said Skippy, who knew this much of the etiquette of the game.

"Yes, but not now," said Vivi in a promissory tone.

Skippy's attitude towards social functions underwent a change of front. He began to feel confidently, vaingloriously at ease. He joined in the general conversation determined to rout the brilliant Miss Cantillon, who knew so many things. Now the rule for such preËminence is simple and some acquire it by cunning and others by instinct. Deny the obvious. Reputations have fattened on nothing else. When inevitably the moment arrived to discuss Maude Adams, and her latest play, Skippy announced that he did not like Maude Adams.

"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 pronounced 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 passed 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."

"I say, how about reading my character now?"

"No, not now, sometime later, perhaps."

"Perhaps?"

"Well I don't know if I'd dare. What are you doing to-morrow?"

"Nothing particular."

"Suppose we get up a hay ride and a picnic. The moon will be glorious."

"Bacon and roast corn? Hurray!" said Skippy, most unromantically.

Vivi got up suddenly.

"Let's go back."

"All right, but it's awfully dark."

"Follow me."

Skippy walked purposely into the first flower bed.

"Help, I'm lost!"

Vivi stood considering.

"Are you sorry?"

"Dreadfully. Ouch, I'm in a rose bush!"

"And you promise not to be cynical and aloof?"

"Cross my heart and hope to die," said Skippy, very well pleased with himself.

Immediately the hand was offered and retained. To be magnanimous he gave it a little extra squeeze.

"That's not fair," said Vivi.

"All's fair in love and war," said Skippy who, under the influence of outward conditions, momentarily forgot his rÔle.

---

"My aunt's cat's pants," said Snorky enviously, when they had departed. "You're getting to be a rapid worker, old top, you certainly are!"

"Oh I've learned a thing or two," said Skippy pompously.

"Splash with your toes, old horse," said Snorky, shaking his head. "Look out, Vivi's an old stager. She collects them."

"What?"

"Scalps," said Snorky with a significant gesture.

"Just watch me."

"You don't say so."

"I've got her feeding out of my hand, gentle as a lamb," said Skippy, remembering with a pleasant tickling sensation the mystified fascination of her way of looking at him.

"Cheese it," said Snorky shaking his head.

"This is different."

"Whoa, old horse, whoa!"

"Snorky, old gal," said Skippy, who had now settled down into the predatory vision Miss Vivi had artfully evoked, "it's easy when you know the game."

"And what's the game?"

"Don't get tagged."

"Elucidate."

"Keep 'em running after you. It's the first one who runs away who wins every time."

"Oh, simple as that?"

"Sure, that's all there is to it."

"Let 'em love you, eh?"

"Oh well," said Skippy modestly, but as he sought his bed he stole a satisfied glance into the mirror.

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