The gauntlet had been thrown down and the demon of jealousy took up his abode with the ménage Bedelle and Green. For a week the comedy continued, while conversation was reduced to a minimum and transmitted in writing along the lines of Skippy's imagining. Each watched the other's correspondence with a jealous eye. Whenever Skippy received a letter from home, he ostensibly hugged it to his shirt-front and, repairing to a corner, read it furtively with the pink morocco case before him. Afterward he would execute a double shuffle across the room, whistle a hilarious strain, and give every facial contortion which could express a lover's joy, while Snorky squirmed and scowled and pretended not to notice. Snorky in turn retaliated by writing long letters after hours by the light of a single candle, ruffling up his hair and breathing audibly. In the morning Skippy, passing towards the washstand, would see on the table a swollen envelope, addressed:
Miss Mimi Lafontaine,
Farmington,
Conn.
These letters troubled him. When a fellow could write over four pages it certainly must be serious, and these looked as though they held forty. The trouble was that Skippy had begun to believe in his own passion. The little Japanese brunette had become a reality to him. He had talked with her, walked with her, received the avowal of her own uncontrollable impulse towards him. In fact, at times he almost believed that he had actually held her in his arms and whirled in the dizzy intoxication of the waltzes he had announced. He even was able to feel a real pang of jealousy, a fierce and contending antagonism against Snorky, who actually knew her. Such a situation was of course fraught with too many explosive possibilities to long endure. Fortunately Fate stepped in and preserved the friendship.
CHAPTER XII
All's Well That Ends Well
A WEEK after these events, returning on a Saturday morning from the last vexations of the curriculum with the expectant thrill of the opening of the baseball season, Skippy was amazed to receive, by the hands of Klondike, the colored sweep, a scribbled note in the familiar handwriting of his sister:
Dear Jack:
Miss Green and I and a party of girls are down for the game. We're at the Lodge. Come right over and bring Arthur.