Читать книгу Skippy Bedelle - Owen Johnson - Страница 21

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BEDELLE, Incorporated! John C. Bedelle, The Bathtub King! For a delicious week Skippy sailed into the future on the magic carpet of his imagination. He dreamed through the long dull hours of recitations; he dreamed when huddled in sweater he watched the scurrying of the baseball candidates; he dreamed over the prunes at breakfast and the prune whip at night, and in his soft and delicious bed he lay awake for hours planning out the disposal of his future wealth.

The week ended, as all weeks must. At precisely five o'clock in the afternoon, with that fine sense of ceremony that was his, Doc Macnooder knocked at the door and entered.

"Well!" said Snorky Green and Skippy in joyful chorus.

"Your hats and follow me!" said Macnooder in his best Dramatic Club manner.

The tone sent a chill down their backs. Silently, already prepared for the great catastrophe, they filed across the campus, to the Upper House. Not a word had been spoken.

"We will now proceed to examine the Fourth Form baths," said Macnooder, in the same lugubrious voice.

Utterly and instinctively without hope Skippy clutched his roommate's arm and stumbled down the stairs. Something was coming, something that meant the end of all! Macnooder, entering the first bathhouse, flung back the door and pointed to the bathtub.

"Mr. Bedelle, there is your answer!"

"Jerusalem, the faucets are in the middle!" said Snorky, recoiling with a gasp.

"The Bathtub Combine has us beat!" said Macnooder. "If we patented the Foot Regulator every bathtub in the country will have the spigot fastened in the middle."

"Why in Sam Hill didn't you think of that?" said Snorky, turning indignantly on the inventor. He kicked at the offending tub, scowled at Skippy and deserted on the spot.

"And this is the friend I'd have made a millionaire!" said Skippy to himself in the bitterness of his trial.

"You see, Bo?" said Macnooder, descending from his pedestal, as he perceived how the revelation had crushed the younger imagination.

"I see, Doc."

"It's no use, is it?"

"No—damn 'em, they've got us beat!"

"Now, old sport," said Macnooder kindly, "don't mope about it. Your ideas are all right and I'm here to keep you practical. Better luck next time, but be sure and come to me."

"Thank you, Doc," said Skippy, through whose dimmed eyes the fatal bathtub seemed to advance like a juggernaut. He escaped and went dizzily across the Campus and sat on the steps of Memorial Hall, gazing out gloomily at the dotted recreation fields. The great Bedelle gymnasium, which but yesterday was outlined in splendor against the sky, was now cinders and dust, Fifth Avenue further off than Africa, and as for Lillian Russell—

"Looking all over for you, Skippy," said a familiar voice.

Before him stood Toots Cortrelle.

"Oh, it's you," he said heavily.

"Are you flush? I thought if you were—that quarter you know—you said—"

"I said I should remember," said Skippy, with a hollow laugh. There was just twenty cents in his pockets that an hour ago had been heavy with millions. He drew out two dimes and tendered them.

"Here's the best I can do, Toots. I'll try to get that other nickel to you to-morrow."