"Good gracious!" cried Miss Dabtree with an impetuous lunge towards the point of attack, which made Skippy modestly avert his gaze. "This place is filled with mosquitoes. We never can sit here!"
She rose and led the way to the parlor.
"Won't you come and wait for Arthur?"
"Thanks, thanks awfully; much obliged," said Skippy, gulping down his disappointment. He tripped against the foot-scraper and made a mess of opening the door for her. He wanted above all things in the world to follow her in and be permitted just for a few more wonderful minutes to sit and gaze at her loveliness. But to admit this was impossible. Whatever happened, she must never suspect, never! So at loss for an excuse he stammered, "I'd love to, but really I ought to get back for study hour."
A moment later, having backed and scraped down the steps and thanked her profusely for some indefinite thing for which she ought to be thanked, he went rushing around the corner, let himself in by King Lentz's window, and surreptitiously gained his room. At last, having torn off the red choker tie and freed his neck, back once more to the ease of bachelor attire, he returned wrathfully to the pest which had perhaps saved him from his first sentimental excursion.
Sunk in a cushioned armchair, his slippered feet on the desk, a bottle of cooling ginger pop in one hand and a cream puff in the other, he placed before his imagination the problem:
"Why the mosquito?"
The more he pondered the more he became impressed with the fact that here indubitably was one of the errors of the Almighty. Snakes destroyed rats and mice at least, but what earthly purpose was served by mosquitoes?
He knew, as all smatterings of outer information reached him via the weekly lecture course, that besides being a stinging annoyance to the human race, the mosquito was a breeder of plagues and had to be fought in southern climes. Having wrathfully considered his subject and come to the conclusion that no mitigating circumstances could exist, he next put to himself this problem:
"If the mosquito cannot be exterminated, can it be neutralized? If so, how?"