The latter was speedily at the board. As he wrote, a silence fell. Previously the professor had called off each letter as written. This time there was no response. With a smile that gradually broadened to a laugh Peters finished an odd Indian name, and asked, “The thought-waves haven’t gone astray already, have they, Mr. Professor? Haven’t been frightened off by a mere handkerchief, surely?”
“I was wondering how to pronounce it,” came the quiet response. “I’ll spell it instead. It is,
“‘M U S Q U O D O B O I T.’”
Peters stared blankly. Not more blankly than the majority of the audience, however, including Kate herself. She turned toward Jack. He appeared as surprised as Peters. Indeed, if there was anything suspicious, it was that Jack appeared a trifle over-astonished.
As the burst of applause which followed the first surprise was succeeded by a wave of laughter, Kate turned back to discover Peters, very red in the face, drawing on the board a picture. As she looked a grotesquely ugly face took shape. The face completed, there was a renewed burst of merriment when Peters topped it with a fool’s-cap, and on that sketched rough hieroglyphics.
“Now whose picture have I drawn?” he demanded loudly.
“Well, you tried to draw mine,” responded the professor, dropping into normal English, “but as the dunce’s tie is far up the back of his collar, I leave the audience to decide whose it is.”
At this there were shouts and shrieks of laughter, and Peters, hurriedly feeling, and finding his own tie far out of place, threw the chalk to the floor and dashed back to his seat amid a perfect bedlam of hilarity.
The uproar soon subsided, however, for not one in the crowded room but was now thoroughly wonderstruck at the demonstration. Some of the older people began to step forward, writing the most difficult names they could think of, meaningless words, groups of figures. A teacher chalked a proposition in algebra. Without error all were called out promptly.
The climax was reached when one of the church elders advanced to the board, and while writing, fixed his eyes on something in his half-opened hand.