“Gentlemen, here is champagne to our real friends and real pain to our sham friends.”
“Good! good!” was the cry, and a big inroad was made on the supply of punch.
Dismal Jones arose and gravely said:
“I would like to inquire, gentlemen, how you regard the manufacture of Eve from Adam’s rib?”
“I regard it as a side-splitting joke,” cried Merriwell quickly, and this answer brought a burst of applause, while Jones relapsed into his chair with a sweet, sad smile, and drank more punch.
The freshmen were happy that night. Never before had they known the sophomores were such jolly good fellows. They took to the punch, regardless of the fact that not a few of them had seen it manufactured. They began to get “mellow.” Sophomores and freshmen, rivals and enemies, hugged each other and danced about. They were seen with their arms about each other’s necks. The freshmen swore the sophomores were fine fellows, and the sophomores swore the freshmen were “dead easy people.”
The punch ran low. It was replenished out of a large tin canister, and Diamond swore that its last state was even worse than the first.
“Oh, what a jolly lot of heads these fellows will have in the morning!” murmured Browning, as he continued to ladle out the stuff, the perspiration pouring down his face.
Then of a sudden arose a fearsome cry:
“Faculty! faculty!”