and allow Snorky to go
in and win her?

"I say, old boy, I'm awfully sorry; do you really care?"

"For Mimi Lafontaine? For a girl that can't tell a man from a cabbage?
Ha, ha!"

All kindly feelings vanished.

"What's the good of calling yourself names?" said Skippy crushingly. He
picked up the photograph and smiled at it. "Mimi is a flirt, but she has
her good points."

"Look here!" said Snorky, rising in sudden fury. "There's one question
has got to be answered right now."

"And pray what is that?" said Skippy, resting one elbow on the top of
the bed and crossing his legs to show his perfect calm.

Snorky planted himself before the bureau and extended his hand in a
furious gesture towards the lace bed cap that now adorned the top.

"Does or does not _that_ belong to Miss Lafontaine?"

"Any one who would lower himself to ask such a question," said Skippy,
still in a stage attitude, "does not deserve my sympathy. I would have
given her up. Now I shall keep her."

"Oh, you think she cares for you, you chump?"

"I do not discuss women."

The gauntlet had been thrown down and the demon of jealousy took up his
abode with the _menage_ Bedelle and Green. For a week the comedy
continued, while conversation was reduced to a minimum and transmitted
in writing along the lines of Skippy's imagining. Each watched the
other's correspondence with a jealous eye. Whenever Skippy received a
letter from home, he ostensibly hugged it to his shirt-front and,
repairing to a corner, read it furtively with the pink morocco case
before him. Afterward he would execute a double shuffle across the room,
whistle a hilarious strain, and give every facial contortion which could
express a lover's joy, while Snorky squirmed and scowled and pretended
not to notice. Snorky in turn retaliated by writing long letters after
hours by the light of a single candle, ruffling up his hair and
breathing audibly. In the morning Skippy, passing towards the washstand,
would see on the table a swollen envelope, addressed:

Miss Mimi Lafontaine,
Farmington,
Conn.

These letters troubled him. When a fellow could write over four pages it
certainly must be serious, and these looked as though they held forty.
The trouble was that Skippy had begun to believe in his own passion. The
little Japanese brunette had become a reality to him. He had talked with
her, walked