"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—"
"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 rôle 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.