My, but that girl was a wonder!
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Suddenly Scroggs remembered us and we went out of the house like projectiles fired from a very loud gun. We cussed each other all the way home—we three athletes. We would have cussed Driggs, but he sneaked the other way and we lost him.
The next morning we went up to police court in our old clothes. Judge Scroggs looked at us sourly when our turn came.
"Young men," he said, "my daughter has admitted that she has been foolish enough to engage herself provisionally to all of you, with the idea of choosing the hero in this afternoon's games. I do not admire her taste. I think she is indeed reckless to fall in love with collegians when there are so many honest cab drivers and grocery boys to choose from. But I have, in the interests of peace, consented to allow you to compete this afternoon. You are discharged. I do this the more willingly because I have seen you here before and shall again. You may go."
We did go, and when we got through that afternoon the knobby-legged athletes from our rival schools looked like quarter horses plowing home just ahead of the next race. Siwash won by an enormous lead and we three were the stars of the meet. Why shouldn't we be when our fiancée sat in a box in the grandstand and cheered us impartially? More than that, old Scroggs sat with her and I have an idea that he got excited, too, in the breath-catching parts.
I think that engagement business must have broken the old man's spirit, or else so much association with college people began to waken dormant brain cells in his head. The rest of the rioters got out of the workhouse right away, and that fall he retired from the bench, declaring that if he was to have a college student for a son-in-law, as looked extremely likely, he needed to put in all of his time at home protecting his property. In honor of his retirement we had a pajama parade which was nine blocks long and forty-two blocks loud, and a platoon of six policemen led the way.
Of course that engagement business left all sorts of complications. Scroggs pestered his daughter for about a month to make her decision. He seemed somewhat relieved when she finally announced that she couldn't; but it wasn't much relief, after all, for by this time he couldn't walk around his own house without falling over Petey Simmons. Just two years ago I got cards to Petey's wedding. He and Martha are living in Chicago in one of those flats where you have seven hundred and eighty-nine dollars' worth of bath-room, and eighty-nine cents' worth of living room, and which you have to lease by measure just as you would buy a vest. If Petey hangs on long enough he is going to be a big man in the banking business, too.
I forgot to clear up this Driggs mystery. The evening after the races, Martha called up Petey Simmons. "Petey," said she, "I wish you would tell me who this fourth man is that I'm engaged to. He doesn't seem to be on the track team and I didn't catch his name. I don't mind having to make up an excuse for being engaged to four men right on the spur of the moment if it is necessary, but I'd at least like to know their names."
Petey was as puzzled as she was and lit out to find Driggs. He was gone, but the next day he turned up and confessed all. He had a terrible affair with a girl in the next town, it seems, and had a date to bring her to the games. He was one of the nineteen criminals, and was so terror-stricken at the idea of being compelled to desert his hypnotizer that when the news of the engagement business leaked out he took a long chance and went up and announced himself. It worked, but we caught him two nights later and shaved his hair on one side as a gentle warning not to do it again.