"Wake up!" said Happy, making a dive for a partner. "You're walking in your sleep."
Skippy went sadly out and down to the bridge where he perched on a pile and contemplated the swirling currents with melancholy. What had happened? After an hour of bitter rumination he rose heavily and engrossed in his own thoughts passed two ice-cream parlors, utterly forgetful of the sudden wealth in his pockets. On the way home he perceived something white and pink moving lightly in airy freedom, while at her side laden to the shoulder with sweaters, rugs, a camp stool and a beach umbrella was Sam. He came rebelliously to the home porch and then hastily ducked around to the side entrance, for the porch was in full possession of Clara who was entertaining a group of men. He sought to gain his room noiselessly via the back parlor and came full upon Tootsie who was showing a book of photographs to a pudgy, red-haired boy, who blushed violently at his intrusion and stood up, until he had acknowledged the embarrassed introduction and escaped.
"What in thunder's gotten into everybody anyhow?" he said to himself disconsolately. "Girls, girls everywhere. The place is full of them and everybody twosing, twosing! What in Sam Hill is a regular fellow to do! Gee, but it's going to be a rotten summer!"
So in this melancholy seclusion, gazing out of his window, at the green landscape vexed by the omnipresent flash of white skirts, uneasily conscious that a crisis had arrived in his social progress that would have to be met, Skippy began to commune with himself and likewise to ruminate. His first contact with female perfidy had destroyed half his faith in woman; never again could he trust a brunette. Some day he might permit himself to be appreciated by a blonde, but it would take a lot of convincing. But it is one thing to have fixed principles and another to resist the contagions of a whole society. Virtue is one thing but loneliness is another.
"What the deuce is a regular fellow going to do?" he said. But already his resentment had given way to a brooding anxiety. All at once, he remembered that he too had loved. Something that had been dormant awoke, as the touch of spring awoke the great outdoors.
"For I must love some one,
And it may as well be you."
The refrain haunted him. Had the time come when even he would have to descend?