"And you asked my confidence!" said Skippy reproachfully. "Tina and I grew up together. She ran away a year ago. It's a terrible story, terrible! She's had the devil of a life, poor little girl. Gosh, if I were only twenty-one!" "Skippy, if you are faking it again this time," said Snorky, whose confidence was shaken by the perfect seriousness of his chum's melancholy. "If you are, dinged if I'll ever believe another word." "See here--did I volunteer to tell you?" said Skippy, who rose with a complete injured air. "That settles it. This is all you'll ever know." And leaving Snorky in a ferment of curiosity he went to his desk, drew out a sheet of paper and began to run his fingers through his hair. Snorky, as a matter of fact, had hit the nail on the head, though of course it would never do to have him suspect it. Skippy did not mind confiding to him his state of mind, in fact it was absolutely necessary if he were to go on without an internal explosion to seek some sympathy and understanding. But to admit to Snorky that he had actually succumbed to Mimi the Japanese brunette, particularly when the issue was still clothed in doubt,--was unthinkable. So Skippy invented Tina. CHAPTER XVIII LOVE COMES LIKE THE MEASLES IT had all happened the Saturday before, when for reasons of her own Miss Clara Bedelle (the reasons taking shape in the heroic figure of Turkey Reiter, captain of the eleven, and the Triumphant Egghead, premier danseur of the school) had asked Skippy to invite those heroes, as she, being already wise in protective knowledge, preferred not to show her affection too directly. Skippy, on receipt of these sisterly directions, had been in a towering rage, for it had never occurred to him that men of the world such as Turkey and the Egghead would for a moment condescend. If it had not been for the added bait of a Princeton game, he would never have found the courage. The result upset all his preconceived theories, and it was not until he found himself on the high road to Princeton, actually squeezed into a buggy between two eager and enthusiastic lords of the school that he attempted to reason it out. The attempt, however, was beyond him. If girls as such were incomprehensible, how the deuce was he, Skippy Bedelle, to conceive that such a thing as a sister, particularly his sister, could arouse any enthusiasm? "Guess it's the grub and the game all right," he reflected finally. "Anyhow they will let me alone, that's something."