Pedestrians paused to stare, poke each other in the ribs, laugh and chaff the big fellow on the stool, but he did not heed them in the least, calmly continuing to fish, as if he expected at any moment to feel a bite.
Frank, Hodge, Pierson, Gamp, Griswold and Noon were some of the students who had come upon this surprising spectacle while walking along the street.
Noon was a prominent candidate for the position of catcher on the ’varsity ball team, but Hodge was coming into notice through his work on the freshman nine, and, although he was a freshman, it was rumored that, aided by the influence of Frank, he stood a chance of getting on for a trial.
Joe Gamp was a big, awkward boy from New Hampshire, who, for all of the time he had spent in college, could not drop the vernacular of the farm. To hear him talk no one could have dreamed he was a college student, and that he stood well in his class. And he stammered outrageously.
“Gug-gug-gug-great gosh!” he cried, standing with his hands in his pockets and staring at the fat youth on the stool. “Will somebody tut-tut-tell me what in thunder it mum-mum-mum-means? First we saw a fuf-fuf-feller walkin’ araound with his cuc-cuc-clothes turned wrong sus-sus-sus-side out, then another was bub-bub-bub-barkin’ like a dorg, another was tryin’ to stand on his head in fuf-fuf-front of the pup-pup-pup-post office, and here’s Browning fuf-fuf-fuf-fuf—— Here is Bur-bub-bub-bub-bub—— I sus-sus-sus-sus——”
“Whistle, Joe!” laughed Frank. “Whistle, quick. You’re going backward, and you’ll have to say it all over if you don’t whistle.”
Gamp whistled.
“I sus-sus-sus”—whistle—“I say here’s Browning tut-tut-trying to cuc-cuc-cuc-catch a fuf-fuf-fuf-fuf”—whistle—“a fish in the middle of the sus-sus-street, just as if he was fishin’ in the dud-dud-dud-dud”—whistle—“the deep blue sea. I don’t understand what all this bub-bub-business is abub-bub-bout.”
“I didn’t know but the first fellow we saw was doing it on a wager,” said Bart; “but now——”
“Those fellows are candidates for some society,” explained Pierson. “They have been commanded to do those things, and they dare not disobey if they wish to pass.”