under
the sofa the telltale slippers of Miss Clara Bedelle, he added, "I say,
how did you ever keep it from Sis?"

"Oh, she thinks it's another caller," said Mimi, staring a little.
"Really, Jack, I'm beginning to suspect you're an old hand."

"Well, of course this isn't the first time," he said, leaning back and
sinking his fists in his trousers pockets.

Miss Mimi gave a gasp of astonishment.

"Well, I never, and all you said to me too about the photograph and the
letters you tore up."

"Did you really believe all that?" said Skippy with a smile that seemed
to cut across his face. His heart was bursting; yet the task of revenge
was sweet. "You know Sidell and I are old hunting partners."

Miss Lafontaine sat upright, forgetting everybody in the dismay of her
discovery.

"Jack Bedelle, do you mean to say that it was all fixed up between you
two?"

Again Mr. John C. Bedelle smiled.

"Oh, we know a trick or two, even if we're still in school."

Miss Mimi's look was not such as is generally ascribed to the gentler
sex. She bit her lip and said furiously:

"You just tell Mr. Sidell--" and then, quite suffocated with rage, she
stopped and flung a little fan, furiously, across the room.

"Now I see her as she is," thought Skippy with a healing delight. Aloud
he added: "Oh, if you really want to know the truth about Sidell, just
ask Sis. She probably put him up to the whole game."

Now this was rather crude, and at another time Miss Lafontaine would
have detected the artifice and consequently divined the whole
fabrication, but at present she was quite too angry, particularly when
she realized that her best friend was a witness to her discomfiture.

"Just what do you mean by that?" she said angrily.

"Why, they've been sweet on each other for a couple of years," he said,
with malice aforethought. "Guess you're not on to Sis. She'd steal
anything with pants on that came within a mile of her. Ask her sometime
about the mash notes the plumber's boy used to shoot up to her window,
or perhaps you'd better not, it gets her too hot. But anyway I advise
you to keep your eyes open." He rose, for the sudden shifting of the
slippers back of the sofa warned him it was time to depart.

"Good-bye, Mimi," he said carelessly. "Two can play the same game,
remember that."

Then, calculating the moment, he bumped into the etagere, upsetting the
goldfish, and as the dripping figure of Miss Clara Bedelle emerged with
a scream