CHAPTER XHAZERS IN MERRY MOOD.
The youth who had stood for a moment on the steps of the residence of Mrs. Virgil Throckmorton had indeed been Dick Starbright. He had chanced to pass along the street, and a sudden impulse had taken him to the door. His friend, Bert Dashleigh, had told him that Rosalind was soon to leave New Haven. A desire to see her and have a few words with her before she went away sent him up the steps, where he became an unwilling listener to some of the words spoken by her and Morgan, for Morgan had spoken louder than he knew.
“I guess I’ve made a mistake!” he had grumbled to himself, his heart flaming against the conduct of the youth whose words he had overheard; and he had beaten a quick retreat to the street, mentally raging against Morgan, and assuring himself that he had been an idiot for yielding to the temptation to speak again to Rosalind.
His thought, as he went down the street toward the car-line, was to wait for Morgan and demand an explanation; but he did not do this, and, flinging himself into the first electric that came along, he rode back to the campus. The recent snow had passed away in a rain-storm, which had been followed by a return of sharp, frosty weather.
He found the famous quadrangle filled with college men, who seemed to be having a high old time about something. Dashleigh caught him by the arm.
“What’s up?” Dick demanded.
“I don’t know. They’re roping in the freshmen. Perhaps we’d better make ourselves scarce.”
But Starbright had already been sighted.
“Oh, Starbright! Come bow to the golden image!” was shouted from the crowd.
Dashleigh started to run, but he found himself opposed by Bingham and Jack Ready, who cleverly tripped him as he put his nimble legs in motion.
“Refuse me!” said Ready, thrusting out his right hand in a wiggling way as he planted himself before Starbright. “Will you go of your own ’cord, or shall we cord you?”
He had an arm linked through one of Dashleigh’s, while Bingham was holding Dashleigh up on the other side.
“What’s up?” Dick calmly asked.
“We are! It isn’t late, you see!”
He saw other sophomores gathering round him, but made no attempt to run. Down near the fence was a howling mob of students, mostly sophomores and freshmen, who seemed to be dancing a war-dance about a captive.
“There was a fellow in the Scripture——” Ready began.
“Oh, there was!” Dick interrupted.
“No impertinence, freshman!” cried Ready, blowing out his red cheeks. “There was a fellow in Scripture who was commanded to bow before the image of Somebody-or-other, and he refused, and awful things happened to him!”
“Yes; I remember that he came out all right in the end!”
“Oh, did he? I’ll have to quit quoting Scripture, or go to studying it. But you’ll not come out all right in the end.”
Dashleigh tripped Bingham and tried to break away.
“Oh, gentle friend, why dost thou try to flee?” Ready purred, holding onto Bert with iron grip. “Dost thou not see that the enemy surrounds thee?”
“What’s up?” Starbright again asked.
“Morgan! Morgan!” came as if in answer; and it seemed strange to Starbright, too, for he was thinking more of Morgan at the moment than he was of what Ready was saying, or of the antics of the rollicking sophomores near the fence.
For the sophomores, he cared little enough, having long ago made up his mind that the only way to deal with them was to let them have their way, if it was not too rough, and so get rid of them in the shortest order.
Morgan, following Starbright toward the campus, had been suddenly surrounded by a lot of sophomores who seemed to be lying in wait near the entrance to capture straggling freshmen. Morgan was in an ugly mood, because of the events of the evening; and, instead of gracefully submitting, he began to fight, using his fists freely. In consequence of this he was roughly thrown down, tied snug and tight with a stout cord, and then carried bodily toward the rioting mob near the fence, who seemed to be waiting for just such obstreperous victims.
“I guess I’ll go along and see the fun!” said Starbright good-humoredly, though his heart was panting against Dade Morgan. Then to himself, as he moved on with Dashleigh and another freshman who had been caught in the sophomore net, he said:
“I’ll see Morgan after this thing is over, whatever it may be. I’ll see him, ask him some questions, and get the answers, too!”
The howling mob gave way, and Starbright saw a large picture of the rotund proprietor of “Billie’s,” the freshman inn. It was a mere daub on wood, displaying the round stomach and the shining, bald head of the genial proprietor. It had been painted by some humorous student and placed in front of “Billie’s” one night in lieu of a sign-board which some other student or students had stolen. The proprietor, knowing the ways of college youths, had smiled his benediction on it and set it up over the show-case between his two front parlor windows.
And now this gem of art had been surreptitiously extracted from the tavern, and all the freshmen caught in the sophomore drag-net that jubilant, crisp evening were being made to go down on their knees before it and affectionately kiss the bald head.
Morgan was hurt and indignant. He somehow fancied that, because he was conspicuous as a leader of the freshmen and had done many things to draw about him a circle of adherents, he should not be forced to do so humiliating a thing as to kneel on the frosty sand and plant an unctuous kiss on the pictured bald head.
“Oh, you didn’t half-salute Billie!” Bingham declared, giving Morgan a push that almost drove his nose through the wood on which the portrait was drawn. “If you should plant a kiss like that on the ruby lips of your best girl she would have odious opinions of you.”
“Oh, let up!” Morgan growled. “This is too silly for anything!”
“Except freshmen!” said Bingham. “Salute the bald spot of the human billiard-cue in a respectful manner, or——”
Two or three sophomores caught Morgan by the neck and shoulders and forced his lips to the picture, and held him there, in spite of his protestations, while he kissed Billie’s bald head over and over again. When released he was mad clean through.
Starbright was pushed up to the daub, murmuring, though he was known never to drink:
“Oh, thou human punch-bowl, thou concocter of that nectar of the gods! How I love thee!”
He appeared to want to take the picture to his bosom in a rapturous embrace, but was dragged back.
“Thou varlet!” cried Ready, pleased with Starbright’s apparent nonchalance, which was in such marked contrast to Morgan’s fuming rage. “Avaunt, there! A dog is not privileged to embrace a king!”
“The dog was merely trying to bite him!” chattered Bingham.
“Your pardon!” said Starbright. “The dog mistook his baldness for a link of sausage!”
“And thought he recognized a kinship!” laughed Greg Carker.
At which sally from the solemn and philosophical Carker the boisterous sophomores cackled with glee.
The twang of a mandolin was heard, as Bert Dashleigh was made to waddle forward on all fours and kiss the shiny pate of the pictured host. It was Dashleigh’s own mandolin, produced by a student who had hastily invaded Dashleigh’s room for the purpose.
“How did you get in?” Bert coolly asked, stopping in the midst of his osculatory adorations.
“Fell through the transom,” said the student. “Why the dickens do you always keep your door locked? That transom is so contracted that I sprained my wish-bone.”
“Good thing if you had sprained your neck!” Bert flung back; and was then dragged away, lest in his fervent kissing he should lick all the paint off the wood.
Two stools were produced from some invisible source, and, while other freshmen were compelled to bow before and kiss the picture, Dashleigh and Starbright were made to sit on the stools and sing:
“Oh, who will smoke my meerschaum pipe, meerschaum pipe?Oh, who will smoke my meerschaum pipe, meerschaum pipe?Oh, who will smoke my meerschaum pipe, when I am far away?“Oh, who will go to see my girl, see my girl?Oh, who will go to see my girl, see my girl?Oh, who will go to see my girl, when I am far away?“Oh, who will kiss her ruby lips, ruby lips?Oh, who will kiss her ruby lips, ruby lips?Oh, who will kiss her ruby lips, when I am far away?“Oh, who will squeeze her snow-white hand, snow-white hand?Oh, who will squeeze her snow-white hand, snow-white hand?Oh, who will squeeze her snow-white hand, when I am far away?”
“Oh, who will smoke my meerschaum pipe, meerschaum pipe?Oh, who will smoke my meerschaum pipe, meerschaum pipe?Oh, who will smoke my meerschaum pipe, when I am far away?“Oh, who will go to see my girl, see my girl?Oh, who will go to see my girl, see my girl?Oh, who will go to see my girl, when I am far away?“Oh, who will kiss her ruby lips, ruby lips?Oh, who will kiss her ruby lips, ruby lips?Oh, who will kiss her ruby lips, when I am far away?“Oh, who will squeeze her snow-white hand, snow-white hand?Oh, who will squeeze her snow-white hand, snow-white hand?Oh, who will squeeze her snow-white hand, when I am far away?”
“Oh, who will smoke my meerschaum pipe, meerschaum pipe?Oh, who will smoke my meerschaum pipe, meerschaum pipe?Oh, who will smoke my meerschaum pipe, when I am far away?
“Oh, who will smoke my meerschaum pipe, meerschaum pipe?
Oh, who will smoke my meerschaum pipe, meerschaum pipe?
Oh, who will smoke my meerschaum pipe, when I am far away?
“Oh, who will go to see my girl, see my girl?Oh, who will go to see my girl, see my girl?Oh, who will go to see my girl, when I am far away?
“Oh, who will go to see my girl, see my girl?
Oh, who will go to see my girl, see my girl?
Oh, who will go to see my girl, when I am far away?
“Oh, who will kiss her ruby lips, ruby lips?Oh, who will kiss her ruby lips, ruby lips?Oh, who will kiss her ruby lips, when I am far away?
“Oh, who will kiss her ruby lips, ruby lips?
Oh, who will kiss her ruby lips, ruby lips?
Oh, who will kiss her ruby lips, when I am far away?
“Oh, who will squeeze her snow-white hand, snow-white hand?Oh, who will squeeze her snow-white hand, snow-white hand?Oh, who will squeeze her snow-white hand, when I am far away?”
“Oh, who will squeeze her snow-white hand, snow-white hand?
Oh, who will squeeze her snow-white hand, snow-white hand?
Oh, who will squeeze her snow-white hand, when I am far away?”
It was one of those popular college songs which can run on forever, like Tennyson’s brook, and never get weary; and while Dashleigh thumped away on the mandolin and he and Dick bawled out every variation and every verse they had ever heard of or could think of, the captured freshmen were, one by one, forced to crawl reluctantly forward and honor the proprietor of “Billie’s.”
It was all very funny—to the sophomores, and to students who, like Dick and Bert, could take the thing coolly and good-humoredly. To others it was gall and wormwood. Morgan was brought back three times and made to moisten the top of “Billie’s” head with his “roseate spoon-bill,” as Jack Ready facetiously termed Dade’s lips, and Dade grew madder and madder, until he was in a fighting-mood.
When released at last he stumbled blindly away, vowing vengeance on the whole tribe of Yale sophomores. As he pitched on in the semigloom, almost too blind to see which way he was going, he heard his name called, and, turning about, beheld what he took to be one of the tormenting sophomores.
“If you follow me any farther, I’ll spread your nose all over your face!” he threatened.
Whereupon the supposed sophomore drew nearer, laughing in a silent, mirthless way.
“My dear Dade, you are losing your customary calm!” came the warning in a familiar voice.
The supposed sophomore was Hector King.