“Here’s the best one,” said Dick, laying out on the desk a large sheet of paper. “It’s only the design, you understand, girls. This is to be worked out in color—perhaps.”
“Say—this is cute, Dick!” exclaimed Doris. “Why, it’s all right as a pen and ink drawing. Why color it?”
Betty was laughing as she read. “I hope this is to an intimate friend,” said she.
“It is, all right,” replied Dick. “It’s for Buster and he’ll know who sent it, believe me. He knows my artistic style and we have a big joke about his Cicero. He hates it and if he ever gets through in Latin it will be with a couple of summer schools!”
Scallops and various marks around this picture of a valentine indicated that Dick might cut it out in fanciful form. In the middle of the top, above the verse which Dick had composed, was the drawing of an ink bottle and pen, with various blots, here and there. At the right hand corner an arrow, marked Sagitta, pointed toward the poetic lines. On the left, in the corner was a good drawing of a book, large enough to bear the small inscription, two words, one below the other, “Cicero Interlinear.” An array of small arrows pointed to the book, from the expression, “Liber Malus et Noxius!”
Below the verses was a comical picture, in bare outline, of a boy bending over a book, while a candle shed very definite rays around, though the inscription read “Burning the Midnight Oil.”
Other sketchy decorations showed “Bustum” tearing his hair, very crinkly pen-strokes, with “Horribile dictu” and original principal parts, long and short vowels carefully marked: “Hate-o, play-ere, fail-i, flunkum.”
The verses Doris read out loud, while Dick grinned and looked uneasy. “There’s nothing to ’em,” said he.
“If you’re so dumb, this valentine
I send in vain; but heed it,
Unless for years you want to stay,
Translating—work, and beat it!”
Betty laughed and pointed out where a change of punctuation was advisable. “What’s your ‘Factum Romae’ that you sign it?”