"Sure there is. It's like swimming. You can dive in or you can sit on the bank and splash with your toes--Savvy?" "Ha! ha!" "Wait and see. I know a thing or two." Twenty minutes later, having assumed the full glories of evening dress (with studs of the good old-fashioned style that remained anchored), they departed for dinner at the Balous across the way. "Say, put me on," said Skippy, who like all artists of the imagination was seized with an uncontrollable nervousness before facing an audience. "Who's in the party?" "Only Charlie and Vivi." "Vivi?" "Real name's Violet but she's dressed it up." "What's she like? What's her line?" "Stiff as a ramrod--prim as an old maid, conversation strictly educational." "Well, what does she look like?" "Flabby as a cart-horse." "Say, what the devil--" "Grub's o.k. and there'll be fun after," said Snorky by way of justification. "How's the old folks?" "Mr. Balou? He's a terror, gives you the willies. If he doesn't freeze you the old girl will." Skippy's traditional scepticism of any statement with the Snorky stamp would have warned him at any other time. But this being in a way a new experience in strange waters, his nervousness got the better of him. Halfway up the driveway he plucked Snorky's sleeve. "Listen." "Let go me arm you chump." "What do you say to them?" "Say to whom?" "Mr. and Mrs." "Talk about the weather, you ignoramus." "Sure I know that, but afterwards, at dinner, what do you talk about there?" "Don't worry, that's what girls are for." Despite which advice, Skippy nervously ran over his conversational ammunition. There was of course Maude Adams to begin with. He tried hard to think of some book he had read--some work of sufficient dullness to serve up to this blue stocking atmosphere. "Stop shootin' your cuff," said Snorky, applying his finger to the bell. "Don't you know anything about society?" "Who's nervous?" said Skippy indignantly. His backbone stiffened to the consistency of the white manacle that imprisoned his throat, he brushed the slight powder of the dust from the shining patent leathers, which in the fashion of the day extended in long pointed toes, shot back his cuffs for the twentieth time, felt surreptitiously to assure himself that his part was functioning properly and slid behind Snorky Green as he entered the parlor. Something that was neither prim nor stiff nor in the least resembled a cart-horse bore down on them with a swish of ruffled skirts. "Hello, Arthur, how nice of you to come. Dad and Mumsy are out so we're all to ourselves," said Miss Vivi Balou. "Mr. Bedelle? Oh I've heard a lot about _you_!" "Really now, what do you mean?" said Skippy, with a long breath of relief. Miss Balou held his hand just an extra minute as she said this, looking up into his face with an expression of the greatest interest. She was just over five feet, of the dreaded species of brunettes, with a thin, upward pointing little nose and the brightest of eyes.