ep."

Skippy went sadly out and down to the bridge where he perched on a pile
and contemplated the swirling currents with melancholy. What had
happened? After an hour of bitter rumination he rose heavily and
engrossed in his own thoughts passed two ice-cream parlors, utterly
forgetful of the sudden wealth in his pockets. On the way home he
perceived something white and pink moving lightly in airy freedom, while
at her side laden to the shoulder with sweaters, rugs, a camp stool and
a beach umbrella was Sam. He came rebelliously to the home porch and
then hastily ducked around to the side entrance, for the porch was in
full possession of Clara who was entertaining a group of men. He sought
to gain his room noiselessly via the back parlor and came full upon
Tootsie who was showing a book of photographs to a pudgy, red-haired
boy, who blushed violently at his intrusion and stood up, until he had
acknowledged the embarrassed introduction and escaped.

"What in thunder's gotten into everybody anyhow?" he said to himself
disconsolately. "Girls, girls everywhere. The place is full of them and
everybody twosing, twosing! What in Sam Hill is a regular fellow to do!
Gee, but it's going to be a rotten summer!"

So in this melancholy seclusion, gazing out of his window, at the green
landscape vexed by the omnipresent flash of white skirts, uneasily
conscious that a crisis had arrived in his social progress that would
have to be met, Skippy began to commune with himself and likewise to
ruminate. His first contact with female perfidy had destroyed half his
faith in woman; never again could he trust a brunette. Some day he might
permit himself to be appreciated by a blonde, but it would take a lot of
convincing. But it is one thing to have fixed principles and another to
resist the contagions of a whole society. Virtue is one thing but
loneliness is another.

"What the deuce is a regular fellow going to do?" he said. But already
his resentment had given way to a brooding anxiety. All at once, he
remembered that he too had loved. Something that had been dormant awoke,
as the touch of spring awoke the great outdoors.

"For I must love some one,
And it may as well be you."

The refrain haunted him. Had the time come when even he would have to
descend?

CHAPTER XXIII

THE BLONDE OF THE SPECIES

SUNDAY was a nerve-racking problem in days when the New England
tradition still held. There was no fishin