Upon the Grimes’s porch stood Hester and Lily. Indeed, Hester ran down the steps when the head of the M. O. R. candidates reached the gate. But the procession kept right on. Neither Miss Prime, nor Mary O’Rourke, or the other two seniors looked Miss Grimes’s way.
“Why, I thought you said you were touched, Hessie?” cried Lily, in her high drawl.
There was immense giggling on the part of the freshmen crew outside the gate. But Bobby hushed it by a sharp:
“Attention!”
Silence followed among the crew. Bobby stepped forward, drew a baton be-ribboned like those carried by the nominating committee of the M. O. R. She raised it on high. It was noticeable that most of her companions had bits of paper in their hands; from these papers they proceeded to chant the following:
“Where Bedelia wore her necklace
Where the cow had tonsilitis
Where the chicken got the hatchet
Where the graceful swan’s delight is
“Oh!
“Where the fat man’s collar pinches
Where the hangman ties the noose
Where the lady wears the boa
Where the farmer grabs the goose
“Oh! Oh!
“Where Napoleon received it
When he fought at Waterloo,
In that very same location
Little Hester got it, too!
“Oh! Oh! Oh-ho-ho!”
The procession of candidates passed on; but they heard, and the whole street heard! And for fear anybody should fail to understand the trick that had been played upon the unfortunate daughter of the wholesale butcher, Bobby cried:
“Notice my baton? Don’t you want to be ‘touched’ with it, too, Lily? Oh, my!”
Hester could not even speak. She ran into the house to escape the laughter. Never had Bobby Hargrew played so cruel a joke. But she had been stung pretty hard by the false testimony Hester had given against her anent the fire at the school; and for once Bobby had not been above “getting square.”
But had the girl known what would result from this practical joke of hers—had she for a moment suspected how one of her very best friends would be caused to suffer for her sin, honest Bobby would have gone to Hester Grimes there and then and most humbly begged her pardon.