THE two Chums ran down the sidewalk until they saw the outskirts of the town ahead of them and it being too early to meet Nannie, they decided to separate at the next street and go into the business part of the town and see what kind of a place it was.
“I see a good-looking yellow cat down the street I am going to talk to,” said Button.
“Very well,” replied Billy. “If I don’t see you again, be sure and be at the trysting-place by six o’clock this evening.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know yet. I haven’t made up my mind.”
And he never had a chance to make up his mind for at that moment a coat was thrown over his head from behind and many hands grabbed him. Ropes were slipped around his neck and legs and thus, half hobbled and half pulled, he was dragged up a short pair of steps into a barber shop, where amid much laughter which seemed to come from five or six throats, he was lifted and pulled into a barber’s big chair. Here he was securely held so he could not move a muscle and then the coat was taken from off his head and he found himself sitting in a barber’s chair before a glass with five big strong young boys around him laughing in his face.
And the ringleader spoke up and said: “Now, Tony, get to work and fix him up as I gave you directions!”
It seems these were college boys who were out for a lark and they were looking for a white goat when they chanced to see Billy. What they were up to was to catch a goat and shave him so his beard would be the same shape as that worn by one of the professors at the college whom they detested. He had a long face and pale blue eyes with the expression of a girl, so they were sure they could fix Billy up and dress him in the professor’s clothes so he would be taken for the professor himself in a semi-darkened place.
They wished to play a joke on the Junior class. The class had been up to some mischief and no one knew of it but these Seniors and they decided to make the Juniors believe that the professor knew all about it and was about to expel them. So they proposed to dress Billy up as the professor and tie him in a chair at a desk in the recitation room, and then tell the Juniors that the professor wished to see them there at nine o’clock.
“All ready, Tony! First cut his beard into a long point, then trim his hair on the side to look like side whiskers, and fix the hair on his upper lip to look like a long mustache. Then dye them all black but leave the rest of his face white. And oh yes, blacken his eyebrows and lashes!”