"Yes, sir, and we'll show you how a class president looks braided with bailing-rope,—we'll show you the pretty picture in a mirror, Mr. President,—even if we have to haul you out of the arms of twenty Roble dames."
Pete had taken his class-mates by storm and they piped acquiescence in thin Freshman voices. Smith flushed angrily.
Here Lyman interfered.
"All right, make joshes of yourselves if you want to," he said, not so good-natured as at first. "We have given you warning. Just open that door and you may go on with your little conspiracy."
"Come again when you can't stay so long," wittily yelled Pete down the hall. "I'll meet you on the field to-morrow."
"Oh, we'll be there," called back Lyman over his shoulder. "So will the Faculty," and with this covert hint the peacemakers turned the corner.
The sun shown brightly on the red-brown earth of the diamond when the Freshmen, the Sophomores and the Faculty met, according to agreement. The enterprising student-body management had chalked the Quad in conspicuous places:
RUSH of the YEAR,
Sophomore-Freshman Game.
Don't Miss It!
and the college responded. The co-eds were there, radiant in the snowiest of duck shirts, the gayest of shirt-waists. With them were "ladies' men," in variegated golf-stockings and gorgeous hat-bands. The Freshmen, gathered near first base, contrasted disreputably with this display; they wore old clothes, ragged hats, and they carried a miscellaneous collection of canes, borrowed from Juniors or stolen from Sophomores.
These stalwarts of the latest class were loaded with horns and noise-machines. Defiance exhaled from them. It was an impressive object-lesson on the evils of Freshman victories.