We took all this quite humbly and asked him why he didn't see Ole himself and order him to unhand the lady. From the way he turned pale, we guessed he had done that already. Ole weighed two-twenty in his summer haircut and was quick-tempered. We then asked him why he didn't buy Ole off. We also asked him why he didn't shut down the college, and why he didn't have Congress pass a law or something, and if his head had ever pained him before. He was tearing off his collar in order to answer more calmly and collectedly when Ole came into the room. Ole had combed his hair and shined his shoes, and he had on the pink-and-blue necktie that he had worn the month before to the annual promenade with a rented dress suit. He seemed very cheerful.
"Vell, fallers," says he, "das leetle Spencer gal ban all rite. She say she go by me to das party. Ve ban goin' stylish tu, Aye bet yu." Then he saw Frankling and went over to him with his hand out. "Don't yu care, Master Frankling," he said, with one of his transcontinental smiles. "Aye tak yust sum good care by her lak Aye ban her steddy faller." Phew!
Ole took Miss Spencer to the party. There isn't a bit of doubt but that he took her in style. He put more care and exertion into the job than any of the rest of us and he got more impressive results. Ole has his ideas about dress. Ordinarily he wore one of those canned suits that you buy in the coat-and-pants emporiums, giving your age and waist measure in order to get a perfect fit. He wore a celluloid collar with it and a necktie that must have been an heirloom in the family; and he wore a straw hat most of the year. He wore each one till it blew away and then got another. This rig was good enough for Ole in ordinary little social affairs, but when it came to dances and receptions he blossomed out in evening clothes. He had made a bargain with a second-hand clothes-man downtown—split his wood all winter for the use of a dress suit that had lost its position in a prominent family and was going downhill fast. You know how the tailors work the dress suit racket. They can't exactly change the style of a suit—it's got to be open-faced and have tails—but they work in some little improvement like a braid on or off, or an extra buttonhole, or a flare in the vest each year; so that a really bang-up-to-date chap would blush all over if he had to wear a last year's model. I notice the automobile makers are doing the same stunt. They can't improve their cars any more, so they put four doors on one year, cut 'em in two the next and take them off the year after.
This hasn't anything to do with Ole except that that dress suit of his was behind the times one hundred and two counts. It had been a fat man's suit in the first place. It fitted him magnificently at the shoulders. He and the suit began to leave each other from that point down. At the waist it looked like a deflated balloon. The top of the trousers fitted him about as snugly as a round manhole in the street. The legs flapped like the mainsail of a catboat that's coming about. They ended some time before his own legs did and there was quite a little stretch of yarn sock visible before the big tan shoes began. Ole had two acres of feet and he polished his shoes himself, with great care. They were not so large as an ordinary ballroom, but somehow he used them so skillfully that they gave the effect of covering the entire space. Four times around Ole's feet constituted a pretty fair encore at our dances; and I've seen him pen up as many as three couples in a corner with them when he got those feet tangled.
That was Ole's formal costume. But he didn't regard it with awe. Any one could wear a dress suit. It seemed to him that a Senior party to which he was to escort Miss Spencer was too important to pass airily off with the same old suit. He had another card up his sleeve.
"Aye ent tal yu," he explained when we asked him anxiously what it was he proposed to wear. "Yust vait. Aye ban de hull show, Aye tank. Yu fallers yust put on your yumpin'-yack suits. Aye mak yu look lak torta cent."
Of course we waited. We didn't have anything else to do. We worried a little, but we had gotten used to Ole, anyway—and what was the difference? It would be a little hard on Miss Spencer, but it would be magnificently horrible to Frankling, who considered that a collar of the wrong cut might endanger a man's whole future career. So we resigned ourselves and attended to our own troubles.
The night of the party was a cold, clear January evening. There was snow on the ground and it was packed hard on the sidewalks. This was nuts for the oil-burners. They walked their girls to the hall. Four of the reckless ones clubbed together and hired a big closed carriage affair from the livery stable. It happened to be a pallbearers' carriage during the daytime, but they didn't know the difference and the girls didn't tell them; and what you don't know will never cause your poor old brain to ache. We frat fellows blew our hard-worked allowances for varnished cabs and thereby proved ourselves the biggest suckers in the bunch. To this day I can't see why a girl who can dance all night, and can stroll all afternoon of a winter's day, has to be hauled three blocks in a two-horse rig every time she goes to a party. The money we spent on cabs while I was at Siwash would have built a new stadium, painted every frat house in town and endowed a chair of United States languages. But, there!—I'm on my pet hobby again. How it did hurt to pay for those hacks!
I got there late with my girl—she was a shy little conservatory student, who evidently regarded conversation as against the rules—and I found the usual complications that had to be sorted out at the beginning of every class party. Stiffy Short was sore. He was short five dances for his girl—had been working on her program for a week—and he accused the fellows of dodging because she couldn't dance; and was threatening to be taken sick and spend the evening in the dressing room smoking cigarettes. Miss Worthington, one of our Class A girls, didn't have a dance, because Tullings, who had drawn her, had presumed that she was to sit and talk with him all evening. Petey Simmons was in even worse. His girl couldn't dance, but insisted on doing so. She had done it the year before, too. Petey had been training up for two weeks by tugging his dresser around the room. Then there was Glenallen. We always had to form a committee of national defense against Glenallen. He couldn't dance, either, and he would insist on hitching his chair out towards the middle of the room. I've seen him throw as many as four couples in a night. And there was a telephone call from Miss Morse, class secretary and first-magnitude star. Her escort hadn't shown up. He never did show up. When we went around to lynch him the next day he explained desperately that at the last minute he found he had forgotten to get a lawn necktie. You know how a little thing like a lawn necktie that ain't can wreck an evening dress, unless you are an old enough head to cut up a handkerchief and fold the ends under.