They clasped hands and Snorky announced solemnly: "Skippy, old fellow, let 'em have all their old skirts; there's nothing like the real thing, the man-to-man stuff, is there?" "You bet there isn't." "And say, I'm sorry about that souvenir toothbrush, honest I am, and I think you're a wonder, I do." "Oh, that's all right. That's all right," said Skippy, embarrassed. "There's a lot of money in it, but I guess I prefer to make my pile in other ways." CHAPTER XIII A WOMAN OF THE WORLD NOW that the Snorky-Skippy friendship had been placed on the firm rock of mutual revelation and all unfounded jealousies swept away by frank confession, Skippy's imagination returned to the real purpose of life. He was a little ashamed of the time wasted on the opposite sex, even if for a worthy purpose. Such frailties were all very well for Shrimp Davis and the Triumphant Egghead, who had legs educated for the ballroom, but he, John C. Bedelle, had other missions to perform in this life which held such short years for a man of imagination. For several days he sought diligently among the needs of human nature for something on the grand scale. He tried his hand at a perpetual-motion machine. He thought out a combination submarine and airship which would put the navies of the world at the mercy of his country. He even descended to such trivial abstractions as a Reversible Shirt-Front, which took its due place in the book of inventions under the following entry: REVERSIBLE SHIRT-FRONT Argument: Admitted that Reversible Shirt-Fronts are easy to manufacture; what demand would there be for them? Could they be popularized among the working classes? Treat cuffs same way. For certain reasons he decided not to discuss this last invention with Snorky Green. These tentative efforts were but exercising his imagination. He knew it and waited breathlessly. But at last, a month after the failure of the Foot-Regulator, the long-awaited thrill arrived, the thrill which comes only with the possession of a Universal Idea, and for the first time in his long, untroubled fifteen years, it arrived in conjunction with the intrusion into his still simple scheme of things of that arch-disturber--WOMAN. Miss Virginia Dabtree was not destined to occupy the proud place of the first love, though Miss Dabtree (who was Snorky Green's aunt) was eminently equipped for such a position, being eighteen years his senior and at an age when by instinct, habit, and a need of self-encouragement, any tribute from the opposite sex, no matter how given, caused her not the slightest irritation. Skippy, however, was too completely dazzled by the consummate artistry of Miss Dabtree's clinging toilettes, the built-up luxuriousness of her hair, the pink and white complexion, the stenciled eyebrows, and the Lady Vere de Vere attitudes to dare to entertain a personal hope.