CHAPTER XVIIIDASHLEIGH IS LATE AGAIN.
The snow came again, covering the levels and the hills and the icy expanses of the lakes. The morning after its fall, Bert Dashleigh appeared in the campus on skies, and was promptly challenged by numerous freshmen friends for various races.
“Hello, old ski-zicks!” said Ready, coming on the scene. “I’ll race you on those things. No, I don’t mean just that, for you’ll want to wear those. I mean I’ll race you on another pair.”
“You’ll wear the other pair?”
“Yes. I’ll wear a pair and you’ll wear a pair, and we’ll race. The instructor told me yesterday that my exuberant English needed pruning. He seemed to think that was what I came to Yale for. And that’s strange, for I thought I came here to study football.”
He was examining the skies as he talked.
“I thought you came here to torment freshmen!” Bert mildly ventured.
“Well, yes, come to think of it, soph life would hardly be worth living if it wasn’t for you freshies. But I’ll take pity on you and overlook the wide difference in our stations and condescend to race with you on skies this afternoon, or this morning, or any other old time. I’ve a pair in my room. The fellow who took them up there thought they needed pruning by the time he got them through the doorway, and stacked them up against the wall.”
There are few more attractive winter sports than a run into the country on Norwegian skies, especially if the snow is in good condition for the sport, and there are hills for swift descent.
Ready and Dashleigh made a ski-ing trip that afternoon which yielded sport, pleasure, and healthful exercise.
“I thought likely you had something up your sleeve when you challenged me this morning,” Dashleigh chattered, as they were on their homeward way. “I thought if you were with me, though, it would be hard for you to duplicate any such trick as you sophs played on Starbright the other day. Say, that was too bad, billing him as the ‘Giant of the Wheel,’ when he made his bicycle trip to Guilford!”
“A freshman has no right to presume to criticize a sophomore,” said Ready.
But Ready was not like most of the sophomores. He was so different from the other members of his class that, in spite of the fact that he was an inveterate practical joker, so far as the freshmen were concerned, the harassed freshmen liked him surprisingly well. In their eyes he stood among the sophomores pretty much as Frank Merriwell stood among the seniors, though the two were as unlike as is imaginable.
There was only one incident on the trip that seemed worthy of an afterthought, and it was after-events that caused it to be remembered. Not far from the suburbs, as they were ski-ing slowly in, being somewhat tired, a slightly built young man, with a handsome face and dark eyes, approached them and asked about the ice-hockey game which was to be played on Lake Whitney soon.
“Oh, that’s the match Merriwell is getting up!” said Ready.
Then he gave the desired information, and the fellows on skies continued on their way.
“Had a great time!” Bert declared, when he invaded the rooms and found there his chum, Starbright. “Ought to have been along. Ready is a corker!”
“No freshman tricks, then?”
“Not a trick!”
He threw himself down on the lounge.
“I’m to wind up the day by attending that ‘feed’ to-night at Mrs. Whitlock’s on Whitney Avenue. I wish you’d received an invitation, for we could go together.”
“You mean I’d go first, and an hour later you would come tagging along behind.”
“Now, see here! Don’t throw that at me any more. I know I’m slow, but the fault hasn’t always been mine. When I was late at Thurlow’s, it was the fault of my watch. The confounded idiot who overhauled it for me ruined it.”
“And that other time at Mrs. Throckmorton’s?”
Bert picked up his guitar and began to strum it. Finally he put it down.
“Confound you! Why do you look at me that way? If reasons were as plenty as blackberries, I wouldn’t give you a single one. I know I’ve been late a good many times, but it will not happen this evening.”
Dashleigh was fast earning for himself the reputation of being the champion procrastinator of Yale; not because he desired to be slow, but through laziness and his inability to tear himself away from the particular enjoyment in hand. For this reason, whenever he began to strum and sing, which was often, he was likely to forget there were such things as lessons and classes. When talking to a group on the campus, he was slow to tear himself away, if the subject of the conversation was interesting. If he made a call which he enjoyed, he was almost sure to prolong it beyond endurance. Yet he was withal so light-hearted and jolly, so genuinely unselfish, and so pleasant a companion, that he was universally liked.
“I’ll be on time this evening,” he said; then he put away the guitar and dived into some books, suddenly remembering that there was a great quantity of unlearned lore which it behooved him to stow in his brain without delay if he did not want to be dropped or get an awfully low rating.
Then he proceeded to forget all about the “feed” at Mrs. Whitlock’s, and did not remember it again until nearly eight o’clock that evening. It is probable he would not have recalled it then but for a remark made by Jeffreys.
Jeffreys was a freshman, who, with other freshmen, had dropped into Bert’s rooms for a jolly hour or so that evening, after Dick Starbright had gone out. Jeffreys was “a jolly dog,” and so likewise was each of his companions, and Bert was having such a good time that the minutes and the hours slipped by almost unnoticed.
“They’ll have a bang-up time at Whitlock’s!” Jeffreys casually remarked.
Dashleigh fairly jumped out of his chair.
“Gee!”
“Who stuck a pin into you?” Jeffreys asked.
“Why, I’m billed for that entertainment to-night—myself and the mandolin!”
“Well, if that’s so, old man, you’d better get a move on!” Jeffreys assured.
But Bert was not listening to him. He had thrown aside the instrument and was dragging out a dress suit.
“If you will excuse me!” he panted. “Forgot all about that affair. By Jove! what will they think of me? And I told Starbright I’d be on hand to-night on time or break something. Well, there, I’ve kept my word; for I’ve broken that button!”
Then Bert began to “pitch himself into his clothes” in a hurried manner, talking all the time and bemoaning the fate that made him so forgetful. When he was dressed in what he considered a proper manner, he had his friends “look him over” to see that he was all there; bade them a hasty good night, and, with mandolin-case in hand, went out of the room like a shot.
Finding no carriage in waiting on Chapel Street, or the neighborhood, he hurried on and was soon in a car. Suddenly it occurred to him that he was somewhat hazy as to the street-number. He thought he had written it down and had put it in his pocket, and began to search for it, until he remembered that he had just made a change of clothing.
“It was surely 113,” he reflected. “Yes, that was it.”
So he alighted from the car in the neighborhood of what he supposed was the right number, and, after a search, approached a house which he had figured out must be 113. To his amazement, it was wrapped in darkness. Not a light gleamed in it. To make sure that the house was 113, he entered the yard, and, climbing up the steps, struck a match and looked at the number. It was 113.
“Could it have been 131?” he asked himself, and set out hastily for that number.
Having reached it, he stood on the street and listened. There were lights in the house, but no sounds of merriment, such as he fancied befitted such a gathering as he expected to find.
“I’ll bet my next month’s allowance this isn’t the place!” he groaned; then climbed the steps and timidly pulled the bell.
After a little wait the door was opened by a servant, and in answer to his inquiry he was told that Mr. Remy lived there, not Mrs. Whitlock.
“No, I can’t tell you where the Whitlocks live,” was the answer to his next question. “Perhaps they can tell you at the store on the corner.”
Dashleigh began to feel desperately uncomfortable. Nevertheless, he sprinted with his mandolin across to the store on the corner.
“Which Whitlock?” asked the proprietor, somewhat gruffly.
“Whitlock, of Whitney Avenue.”
“Well, there are a lot of Whitlocks on Whitney Avenue.”
Seeing a New Haven directory, Bert pulled it down and began feverishly to consult its pages. He stood aghast. There surely were a “lot” of Whitlocks on Whitney Avenue. He tried to recall the first name of his hostess.
“Marcus, Marcellene, what in the deuce was it? Seems to me it began with an M!”
But there were no Whitlocks on the avenue whose first names began with M. He looked for 113, 131, 213, and 231, and everything else he could find with the combinations of the figures 1 and 3. When he had done this he consulted his watch. The time was eight-thirty, and the dinner was to be given at eight.
“I’m up against it!” he groaned, while the perspiration began to pour out on his face. “Mrs. Whitlock told me personally that she wanted me to be there, and it doesn’t help the matter to think that she wanted the mandolin worse than she did me. They depended on me chiefly for their music, and here am I and the mandolin lost in the deserts of New Haven, with not an oasis in sight.”
Then he attacked the directory again, emerging from its pages more confused than ever. He even began to think that perhaps Mrs. Marcellene Whitlock did not live on Whitney, but on some other thorough-fare, which he had somehow got inexplicably mixed with that of the well-known avenue.
“I’ll begin to think soon that perhaps the name wasn’t Whitlock, and that mine isn’t Dashleigh!”
He slammed down the directory and hurried into the street.
Fortunately, he found a cab there.
“Take me to all the Whitlocks on Whitney Avenue,” he begged. “And be quick about it.”