hard living up to her, but
I'll do it if it kills me!"

CHAPTER XXXII

LIVING UP TO AN ANGEL

SKIPPY woke with a blood curdling shriek and landed sprawling in the
middle of the floor, his legs caught in the sheets, his head smothered
in the comforter, a convulsive grip on the bolster, which he was
desperately trying to stifle when Snorky flung himself out of bed and
rushed to the rescue.

"Hold him back. Help Snorky! Hold him!"

"Hold what, who?" said Snorky, pursuing the smothered figure of Skippy,
who was still wrestling with the bolster. "Wake up. It's me! It's
Snorky."

Skippy's grip relaxed and presently his terror-stricken eyes emerged
from the comforter.

"Holy Maria! In another minute he'd have had me in the electric chair,"
he said, wiping the clammy perspiration from his forehead.

"Nightmare eh?"

"Ugh! Gee! Moses!"

"Too much cigarette."

"Golly, what a life I've been leading!" said Skippy, referring to the
dream. "Bar rooms and gambling dens, dark lanterns, hold-ups, racetracks
and--"

"Wake up, wake up!"

"It's all in the dream," said Skippy sulkily. Then he remembered that
all through the hideous phantasmagoria, in the smoky mists of low
gambling dens, in the drizzle of midnight conclaves, across the
sepulchral silences of leaden prisons, there had flitted the beatific
vision of an angel with velvety eyes and the softest of lisps.

"Well, go on," said Snorky.

"Can't remember any more," said Skippy. Her name must be shielded at
every cost.

He had determined to be a lost character, a wayward son, a gentleman
sport, with nerves of steel. The sentimental values appealed to his
imagination. It gave a deep romantic tinge to the too matter-of-fact
freckled nose and hungry mouth. Besides the end was noble and the end
was Miss Jennie Tupper.

The new role of course had certain exigencies. To be an interesting
reprobate and engage Miss Jenny Tupper's sentimental proclivities for
redemption, it was necessary to present some concrete evidence of a
sinful life. He was shockingly deficient in all the habits that lead to
the gallows. Desperate characters he remembered (recalling the Doctor's
terrific sermons on the Demon Cigarettes which are the nails in the
coffins of mothers) usually had their fingers stained with telltale
traces of the nicotine which was gnawing at their lungs.

He ensconced himself by the fireplace (out of deference to Snorky's
estimate of the governor) and taki