“Oh, all sorts of things; I can’t remember them. The other day he came running in from the Gym without changing his clothes. He’d just slipped his coat over his sleeveless shirt, and buttoned it up high in the neck. He unbuttoned it again in the class without thinking, and Moore saw the low neck underneath. ‘I don’t want any half-dressed boys in my classroom,’ he said. ‘Tompkins, go and dress yourself properly!’ Tommy went out and stayed half an hour. When he came back, he had on patent leather shoes with gaiters, a Prince Albert coat, gloves, a standing collar, and a silk hat. Where he got the hat, I don’t know. He stopped a moment in the doorway and all the fellows looked around; then he took off his hat, and walked calmly up to his seat.”
“What did Moore do?” asked Melvin,—“fire him out?”
“No, he just said, ‘Thank you, Tompkins,’ and went on. It was a great get-up, but some way it didn’t seem to have the effect intended. By the way, they say he’ll have to do the pitching this year. Is he any good?”
“Phil thinks so; and Wallace, I believe, spoke well of him.”
“You’d better warn him, then, to be careful. He doesn’t do anything bad, and he seems a nice fellow at bottom, but these little tricks may get him into trouble. They’d fire the pitcher on the nine just as quick as anybody else. You remember they sent off one fellow last year for putting a bonnet on the head of that plaster Diana that stands in the hall.”
“That was for example,” returned Dick, vigorously. “Those casts were the gifts of a lot of the Alumni, and the fooling with them had to be stopped.”
“They stopped it for that fellow, anyway,” said Curtis, dryly. “Is this meeting on Saturday going to be any good?”
“I hope so,” said Dick. “There’ll be the usual indoor events and some short dashes on the wooden track outside. We’ve given good handicaps, and there ought to be some hard races.”
“Then it’ll have to be better than the Faculty Trophy performance last month. That was about as keen as a croquet match.”
“We’ll improve on that,” replied the manager, confidently. “The fellows have been doing better lately.”