“Oh, bugs!” I blurted with such roughness that it must have made his sensitive and poetic nerves clang.
At eight o’clock a group of students, with clean collars and well-pressed clothes, came down from the University building, each carrying an ironing-board, to be sold in some nearby town. This ironing-board was entirely unlike every other ironing-board invented by man or woman. It was the product of the fertile and practical mind of our mathematical professor; its chief virtues being, as described in the prospectus, that “it stands up like a soldier, kneels down like a camel, and folds up like a jack-knife!” With all its novelty, it was extremely practical and, the agents reported, sold well. A large number of useful citizens are out in the serviceable centres of life, who, if they ever choose a coat of arms will have to adorn their shield with an ironing-board—“rampant,” for to it they owe much of the financial lubrication which smoothed their passage through the school.
Hurrying after the same train were three young women, each armed with a book, on their way to make fifty per cent from literary householders. At different hours of the morning other students went to the village where every sort of task from house-cleaning to raking up dead gardens was undertaken. Evangelical University was at work.
The head waiter, Brock, came into the room as I was cleaning it and said:
“Priddy, has any one been in after the tub?”
“The tub?”
“Yes, and the rubbing board!”
“I didn’t know those things were here.”
“Your roommate and I have a whole laundry set on shares. Look in my room and you’ll see the irons; the flat-irons.”
“No, the tub and the board are not here,” I reported, after a search.