"Well, bub, you're at the age when they fall fast and easy. Now listen to a few pearls of wisdom. Got your ears open?" "Fire away, Sambo!" "If you've _got_ to fall and you will--sure you will, don't shake your head--if you've got to fall, don't trail around on an old woman's skirts and get treated like a dog--fetch and carry stuff. Look the field over and pick out something young and grateful. Something easy. Something that'll look up to you. Let her love you. Be a hero. Savvy?" "Huh! Girls give me a swift pain," said Skippy with a curl of his upper lip. "Wait and count the pains," said Sam with a grin. "You're at a bad age. Well, I have spoken. What's the use of having an older brother if he can't do you some good?" It being only four o'clock, Skippy decided to look up the Gutter Pup, who with the Egghead, represented the school contingent at Gates Harbor. Lazelle, more familiarly known as the Gutter Pup, Gazelle, Razzle-dazzle and the White Mountain Canary according to the fighting weight of the addressee, lived just across lots. With three months' respite ahead from the tyranny of the chapel bell, three months of home cooking, fifteen dollars in his pocket and nothing to do but to romp like a colt over pastures of his own choosing, Skippy went hilariously over the lawns, hurdled a hedge and hallooed from below the well-known window. "Hi there, old Razzle-Dazzle, stick your head out!" A second and a third peremptory summons bringing no response, he went cautiously around the porch. "Why it's Jack Bedelle," said the Gutter Pup's sister from a hammock. "Gracious, I never should have known you!" "Hello yourself," said Skippy, acknowledging with a start the difference a year had brought to the tomboy he had known. "Say, you've done some growing up yourself." He ended in a long drawn out whistle which Miss Lazelle smilingly accepted as a tribute. "I say, Bess, where's the old Gazelle?" "Charlie? Why he's gone out canoeing with Kitty Rogers." "What!" Miss Lazelle repeated the information. Skippy was too astounded to remember his manners. He clapped his hat on his head, sunk his fists in his pockets and went out the gate. The Gutter Pup spending his time like that! He made his way to the club where more shocks awaited him. On the porch was the Egghead feeding ice cream to Mimi Lafontaine. On the tennis courts Puffy Ellis and Tacks Brooker were playing mixed doubles! Skippy could not believe his eyes. What sort of an epidemic was this anyhow? He went inside and immediately a victrola started up a two-step and lo and behold, there before him whirling ecstatically about the floor, held in feminine embraces, were Happy Mather and Joe Crocker, the irreconcilables of the old gang! "Hello, Skippy, shake a foot," said Happy Mather encouragingly. "Want to be introduced?" "Excuse me," said Skippy loftily. "What's happened to the crowd? Can't you think of anything better than wasting your time like this?"