"I guess you are right, Hicks!" grinned Butch Brewster, as he looked from
the window, down on an indescribably noisy scene. "For once, your riotous
tumult went unheard. Say, get your traveling-bag ready, and leave that
pestersome banjo behind, if you want to go with the nine!"
Several members of the Gold and Green nine, embryo American and National
League stars, roosted on the Senior Fence between the Gymnasium and the
Administration Building, with, suitcases and bat-bags on the grass. In a
few minutes old Dan Flannagan's celebrated jitney-bus would appear in the
offing, coming to transport the Bannister athletes downtown to the station,
for the 9 P.M. express to Philadelphia. Incited by Cheer-Leaders Skeezicks
McCracken and Snake Fisher, several hundred youths encouraged the nine,
since, because of approaching final exams., they were barred by Faculty
order from accompanying the team to Ballard. In thunderous chorus they
chanted:
"One more Job for the undertaker!
More work for the tombstone maker!
In the local cemetery, they are very—very—very
Busy on a brand-new grave for—Ballard!"
As the lovable Hicks expressed it, "'Coming events cast their shadows
before.' Commencement overshadows our joyous campus existence!" However, no
Bannister acquaintance of T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., could detect wherein the
swiftly approaching final separation from his Alma Mater had affected in
the least that happy-go-lucky, care-free, irrepressible youth. If anything,
it seemed that Hicks strove to fight off thoughts of the end of his golden
campus years, using as weapons his torturesome saengerfests, his Beefsteak
Busts down at Jerry's, and various other pastimes, to the vast indignation
of his good friend and class-mate, Butch Brewster, who tried futilely to
lecture him into the proper serious mood with which Seniors must sail
through Commencement!
"You are a Senior, Hicks, a Senior!" Butch would explain wrathfully. "You
are popularly supposed to be dignified, and here you persist in acting like
a comedian in a vaudeville show! I suppose you intend to appear on the
stage, and, when handed your sheepskin, respond by twanging your banjo and
roaring a silly ballad."
Yet, the cheery Hicks had been very busy, since that memorable day when,
thanks to Caesar Napoleon and the hoax of the Heavy-Weight-White-Hope-Brigade of the track squad, he had cleared the cross-bar at five-ten,
and won the event and his white B! Mr. T. Haviland Hicks, Sr., overjoyed
at his son's achievement, had sent him a generous check, which the youth
much needed, and had promised to be present at the annual Athletic
Association Meeting, at Commencement, when the B's were awarded
deserving athletes, which caused Hicks as much joy as the pink slip.
With his final study sprint for the Senior Finals, his duties as team-manager of the baseball nine, his preparations for Commencement, his
social duties at the Junior Prom., and multifarious other details
coincident to graduation, the heedless Hicks had not found time to be
sorrowful at the knowledge that it soon would end, forever, that he must
say "Farewell, Alma Mater," and leave the campus and corridors of old
Bannister; yet soon even Hicks' ebullient spirits must fail, for
Commencement was a trifle over a week off.
"Hicks, you lovable, heedless, irrepressible wretch," said Big Butch,
affectionately, as the two class-mates thrilled at the scene. "Does it
penetrate that shrapnel-proof concrete dome of yours that the Ballard game
tomorrow is the final athletic contest of my, and likewise your, campus
career at old Bannister?"
"Similar thoughts has smote my colossal intellect, Butch!" responded the
bean-pole Hicks, gladsomely. "But—why seek to overshadow this joyous scene
with somber reflections? You-should-worry. You have annexed sufficient B's,
were they different, to make up an alphabet. You've won your letter on
gridiron, track, and baseball field, and you've been team-captain of
everything twice! Why, therefore, sheddest thou them crocodile tears?"
"Not for myself, thou sunny-souled idler!" announced Butch, generously,
"But for thee! I prithee, since you pritheed me a few moments hence, let
that so-called colossal intellect of yours stride back along the corridors
of Time, until it reaches a certain day toward the close of our Freshman
year. Remember, you had made a hilarious failure of every athletic event
you tried-football, basketball, track, and baseball; you had just made a
tremendous farce of the Freshman-Sophomore track meet, and to me, your
loyal comrade, you uttered these rash words, 'Before I graduate from old
Bannister, I shall have won my B in three branches of sport!'
"I reiterate and repeat, tomorrow's game with Ballard is the last chance
you will have. There is no possibility that you, with your well-known lack
of baseball ability, will get in the game, and—your track B, won in the
high-jump, is the only B you have won! Now, do you still maintain that you
will make good that rash vow?"