society and this is the initiation."

"Skippy?"

"Hello!"

"The bell's no good at all."

"Twenty-nine, thirty--remember your oath."

"Say! Count a little faster; I can't hold out much longer."

"Red leg or blue?"

"Both, darn it!"

"Any difference?"

The reply was too blasphemous to be set down here.

The Tennessee Shad, too, was paying dearly the price of his curiosity;
so, being convinced that he had stumbled upon a secret initiation, he
decided to get some enjoyment out of the situation. Presently,
trumpeting his mouth with his hands, he emitted a long, wailing sound:

"Ugh, wugh, guggle, guggle!"

"Good lord! What was that?"

"Did you hear it?"

"It's a night owl that's all; fifty-six, fifty-seven--"

"Oonah, woonah, WOO, HOO!"

"Night owls nothing; it's ghosts!"

"There ain't no ghosts, you chicken-livered--"

But at this moment the Tennessee Shad, smarting from head to foot, let
out an ear-splitting screech and the three experimenters in mosquitology
disappeared at top speed. The Tennessee Shad, satisfied, emerged,
examined with curiosity a discarded helmet smeared with
citronella-soaked cheesecloth, and picked up a rusty dinner bell. This
last stuck in the crop of his imagination.

"Secret-society stuff," he said to himself as he slapped his way out of
the marsh. "But why the bell? Darn mysterious, that bell. . . ."

CHAPTER XVI

EXPERIMENTS IN FRAGRANCE

THE result of the first investigation in the likes and dislikes of the
New Jersey mosquito brought a decided difference of opinion. It was
admitted (given the swollen condition of Greaser Tunxton's legs) that
the insect's sense of hearing was undoubtedly defective. Snorky Green
was equally emphatic in expressing his conviction that all colors were
alike to it, but Skippy insisted that it was not scientific to jump to a
conclusion on the basis of one experiment.

"But golly! I had forty-seven bites on the red stocking and sixty-five
on the blue, and if that doesn't prove anything, I'd like to know what!"

"It proves that blue attracts them more than red, that's all. We must
now try other combinations."

"It proves one thing right here," said Snorky Green, dousing his legs
with the second bottle of witch hazel. "I'm through on the
human-experiment game, and that's flat."

"I'm inclined to believe we should concentrate on the sense of smell,"
said Skippy thoughtfully. "As a matter of fact the experiment turned out
as I fo