"Have you got the box with the shirt studs in?" said Skippy fidgeting.
"Why I handed it—"
"That's so. They're here," said Skippy, after a dip into four pockets.
At the thought that at last after sixteen long and eventful years the supreme moment had come when he would step out of the shell of adolescence and greet the waiting world in his first forty-dollar, custom-made dress suit, in high collar, white stiff bosom, two tails pendant, Skippy shivered slightly and drew a deep, delightfully terrified breath.
"We'll put it over all right," he said loudly, and he began to whistle as is the instinct of boyhood, whether facing the possibility of a parental caning; screwing up courage to ring her doorbell; or turning a gloomy corner in the moonlight where something horrid and shapeless may be lurking.
Twenty minutes later, as he was solicitously examining the crease in the soft lovely black trousers, after hanging the swallow-tailed coat over a padded hanger, Snorky came in with a face of thunder.
"Well, what do you think?" he said nervously.
"They forgot to put in the pants," said Skippy, leaping to the worst.
"Shucks, no. There's a party on to-night."
"A party?"