'Fifteen men on a dead man's chest,
Yo, ho, ho, and a bottle of rum!'
Teck Van Dyck's a pirate. He's gone daffy over something, and we're all going to heaven in a hand-basket."
Of course this was all froth; pure froth. But there was usually a little clear liquor in the bottom of Billy's stein.
"What ails you?" I asked.
An impish grin spread itself over his smooth, boyish face.
"I'm in love, if anybody should ask you. Everything looks green to me, and I want to chew slate-pencils. Ergo—which is college slang for 'Ah, there, stay there'—I'm as daffy as Teck. Don't laugh or I'll set Tige on you. Say, Prebby, do I look like an invalid?"
"Yes; about as much as Mr. John Sullivan did when he carried the world heavy-weight wallop in his good right hand."
"Yet I am an invalid. Doc Fanning says I am, and he's like George Washington. He might lie if he could, but he can't because he's lost the combination."
"What on earth are you gibbering about, Billy?"
"Facts; iron-clad, brass-bound, blown-in-the-bottle, sold-only-in-the-original-package facts. Fanning's the family physician, you know, and he has gone on record as declaring that I need half a winter off in a mild climate. And I don't know to this good minute whether I succeeded in fooling him, or whether he was just plain good-natured enough to size the thing up and fool the governor—I don't, really, Prebby."