"So you think I'm going to Princeton," said Skippy looking at him wisely. "I am—but from there I am making a cut for New York. Get the point?"
"Oh, Tina's in New York?"
"She is." He hesitated a moment, and then weighing his words to give full value to their dramatic significance, he added—"She is on the stage."
"You're a thundering, whooping, common-a-garden liar," said Snorky, who felt that his sympathies were being trifled with. "Where in blazes would you know an actress anyhow?"
"And you asked my confidence!" said Skippy reproachfully. "Tina and I grew up together. She ran away a year ago. It's a terrible story, terrible! She's had the devil of a life, poor little girl. Gosh, if I were only twenty-one!"
"Skippy, if you are faking it again this time," said Snorky, whose confidence was shaken by the perfect seriousness of his chum's melancholy. "If you are, dinged if I'll ever believe another word."
"See here—did I volunteer to tell you?" said Skippy, who rose with a complete injured air. "That settles it. This is all you'll ever know."
And leaving Snorky in a ferment of curiosity he went to his desk, drew out a sheet of paper and began to run his fingers through his hair.
Snorky, as a matter of fact, had hit the nail on the head, though of course it would never do to have him suspect it. Skippy did not mind confiding to him his state of mind, in fact it was absolutely necessary if he were to go on without an internal explosion to seek some sympathy and understanding. But to admit to Snorky that he had actually succumbed to Mimi the Japanese brunette, particularly when the issue was still clothed in doubt,—was unthinkable. So Skippy invented Tina.