“Oh, ask him if this fellow’s a relation of his, and say I supposed of course he must be—such athletic prowess, and all that sort of thing; with a crowd standing there giggling you know how rattled he’ll get.”
“All right,” said Morrill, who was an earnest admirer of Westby’s wit.
So they collected Dennison and Smythe and Allison and Carroll and Scarborough, and marched up the corridor—humorously tramping in step—to Irving’s door. There Westby, newspaper in hand, knocked. Irving opened the door.
“Mr. Upton, sir,” began Westby, “sorry to disturb you, sir.” The boys all began to grin, and Irving saw that he was in for some carefully planned attack. “I was just reading my morning paper, sir, and I wanted to ask you what relation to you the man named Upton is that’s playing on the Harvard Freshman eleven, sir.”
Irving’s eyes twinkled; if ever the enemy had been delivered into his hands!
“What makes you think he’s a relation?” he asked, with an assumption of cold dignity.
“Oh, we all feel sure he must be, sir. Of course your well-known and justly famous interest in all athletic sports, sir—not to say your prowess in them, sir—it’s natural to suppose that any athlete named Upton would belong to the same family with you, sir.”
The boys were all on the broad grin; Westby’s manner was so expansively courteous, his compliments were so absurdly urbane, that Irving threw off his air of coldness and adopted a jaunty manner of reply which was even more misleading.
“Oh, well, if you’ve been so clever as to guess it, Westby,” he said, “I don’t mind telling you—it’s my brother.”
Westby bestowed on his confederates—quite indifferent as to whether Irving detected it or not—his slow, facetious wink. He returned then to his victim and in his most gamesome manner said,—