"Say, old chap, what are you going to do now?"
"Going to bed, damn it!" said Skippy and bolted within.
How could Snorky and Dennis that unworldly fledgling know what Skippy suffered? The forty-eight hours of the Thanksgiving vacation had been like a narcotic dream. He had been under the same roof with her, sat by her side in the darkened theatre and thrilled at the low sobby music that sent his imagination helter-skelter into dangerous pastures; received her confidences, gravely discussed with her the character and eligibility of older men, confided in turn his life's project to launch mosquito-proof socks on a world scale; received the full force of her lovely radiant gentlest of smiles; danced with her alone a whole hour in the Potterman ballroom, suffocated with happiness; and for all of which had promised what? To wear Nuisance about his neck like a millstone, to protect, cherish and guide him through the perils and temptations of boarding-school as though—as though he were his own brother. And Nuisance knew! That was the worst of it,—Nuisance knew the thin tyrant skein by which he held him irrevocably linked! Christmas was yet to come and for what Christmas might hold Skippy possessed his soul in patience.
Then the blow fell. A week later as Snorky Green was returning from the village he perceived Dennis de Brian de Boru in a state of excitement waving a newspaper at him from the porch.
"There must be another birth in the faculty," thought Snorky, puzzled to ascribe an adequate reason. Such events, be it mentioned, were usually attended by cuts and in the higher spheres with even a half holiday.
Finnegan rushed forward, dove at his knees and spilled him on the ground joyously.
"Damn you, you mad Irishman," said Snorky picking himself up and disentangling himself from the newspaper. "What's hit you anyway?"
"It's come, hooray!"
"What's come?"