Skid, he flushes up a bit at that, and one hand goes up to his left inside pocket. Then he laughs foolish. "It isn't I who have forgotten," says he.
"Oh-ho!" says I. "Well, I wouldn't have thought her the kind to shift sudden, when she seemed so——"
But Mallory gives me the choke off sign, and as we walks up Broadway he gradually opens up more and more on the subject until I've got a fair map of the situation. Seems that Sis ain't exactly set him adrift without warnin'. He'd sort of helped cut the cable himself. She'd begun by writin' to him every week, tellin' him all about the lively season she was havin' in Washington, and how much fun she was gettin' out of life. She even put in descriptions of her new dresses, and some of her dance orders, and now and then a bridge score, or a hand painted place card from some dinner she'd been to.
And Skid, thinkin' it all over in the luxury of his nine by ten boudoir, got to wonderin' what attractions along that line he could hold out to a young lady that was used to blowin' in more for one new spring lid than he could earn in a couple of weeks.
"And orchids are her favorite flowers!" says he. "Ever buy any orchids, Torchy?"
"Not guilty," says I; "but they ain't so high, are they, that you couldn't splurge on a bunch now and then? What's the tariff on 'em, anyway?"
"At times you can get real nice ones for a dollar apiece," says he.
"Phe-e-e-ew!" says I. "She has got swell tastes."
"It isn't her fault," says he. "She's never known anything different."
So what does Skid do but slow up on the correspondence, skippin' an answer here and there, and coverin' only two pages when he did write. For one thing, he didn't have so much to tell as she did. I knew that; for I'd seen more or less of Mallory durin' the last few months, and I knew he was playin' his cards close to his vest.