is own unexampled audacity.

"Sir, I do not think I have been introduced to you," said the young
lady, stiffening and looking what to Snorky, at least, were daggers.

He uttered several unintelligible sounds, flushed a fiery red and backed
away.

"Right where the chicken met the axe," said Skippy, who began to whistle
a melancholy tune as he gathered up the scattered greenbacks. "Here
comes mother."

"Let's beat it," said Snorky, who felt a sudden need for a purer
atmosphere.

"You know women better than I do," said Skippy, who though a chum was
human.

"Damn them all," said Snorky, peering over the railing into the night
and exposing his forehead to the cooling breeze. "But why the devil did
she lead me on?"

CHAPTER XXX

EXPERIMENTS IN A DRESS SUIT

WHEN they descended at the Southampton station the family coach was in
waiting. They surrendered their valises to the footman while each clung
tightly to a large square paper box, carefully protected and corded.

"Gee, it'll just about knock the wind out of old Caroline," said Snorky
in a whisper.

"Don't they suspect?" said Skippy nervously.

"Not for a minute. Say, I'd never have the nerve to sport it alone."

"Have you got the box with the shirt studs in?" said Skippy fidgeting.

"Why I handed it--"

"That's so. They're here," said Skippy, after a dip into four pockets.

At the thought that at last after sixteen long and eventful years the
supreme moment had come when he would step out of the shell of
adolescence and greet the waiting world in his first forty-dollar,
custom-made dress suit, in high collar, white stiff bosom, two tails
pendant, Skippy shivered slightly and drew a deep, delightfully
terrified breath.

"We'll put it over all right," he said loudly, and he began to whistle
as is the instinct of boyhood, whether facing the possibility of a
parental caning; screwing up courage to ring her doorbell; or turning a
gloomy corner in the moonlight where something horrid and shapeless may
be lurking.

Twenty minutes later, as he was solicitously examining the crease in the
soft lovely black trousers, after hanging the swallow-tailed coat over a
padded hanger, Snorky came in with a face of thunder.

"Well, what _do_ you think?" he said nervously.

"They forgot to put in the pants," said Skippy, leaping to the worst.

"Shucks, no. There's a party on to-night."

"A party?"

"There'll be millions of people to dinner and a dance aft