nt coquetting with the
salt cellar.

"I suppose I must talk to you, for appearances' sake," said the blonde
Miss Tupper.

"Why so?" said Skippy haughtily, for having just reacted from blondes,
blondes did not appeal to him.

"You ask?"

"Certainly I ask, and I think an apology is due my friend and myself,"
said Skippy from his great fund of literary conversations.

"Well, I like that!"

"You cut us dead twice on the deck and then pretended not to know Arthur
when he started to speak to you," said Skippy icily.

Miss Margarita Tupper looked at him with the intuitive suspicion of the
righteous.

"I don't believe a word of it," she said.

"_That_ is adding insult to injury," said Skippy, still in the best
fictional manner. "Pardon me if I do not pursue this conversation any
longer."

"I guess that'll hold the old girl," he said, chuckling inwardly. But
alas for such vanities, or was it the unseen moral guardians which may
be expected to watch over the daughters of the upright! The sudden shift
of his indignant body was attended with fatal results.

There was a distinct "pop." The upper patent shirt-stud shot out,
tinkled against a vase and rolled directly towards the girl with the
velvety eyes.

"What's that?" said Caroline, startled.

"Some one threw a pebble against the window pane," said a voice.

"Something cracked."

They are wrong, eternally wrong, who look upon youth as a period of
careless joy on the threshold of manhood's struggles and sorrows! Never
in after-life would Skippy Bedelle experience such a blank, helpless
horror as in that awful moment, when he sat overcome with shame and
confusion, awaiting detection. What in heaven's name was he to say when
the eyes of the whole company would inevitably be directed to the
telltale stud, blazing now at the plate of Miss Tupper? What did any one
say, anyhow, when a shirt stud popped across the table? Nothing in his
experience or the experience of all the novelists in the world could
supply a clue. Wave after wave of red and redder confusion rippled up
from his collar and surged to the roots of his hair. Should he brazen it
out? Should he make a light answer, or was it etiquette to apologize
humbly to his hostess? How could he tell? If he were discovered there
was only one thing to do, to run for it, to retreat to his room, lock
his door, escape by the window and leave by the night train, disgraced
and branded forever!

"Very funny," said Mrs. Be