Ballard, who had apparently just got the idea through his head, began to laugh, and said, "That's a good scheme, Chan, haw, haw, haw!"
"Don't laugh so loud," said Channing. "Come on, Freshmen, that blank wall across the street is a good place to begin."
They were led across the street to the corner grocery store. A tight hold was kept on Young and Lee this time.
"Now, this is the way it is done." Channing quickly and rather daintily pasted up a proclamation.
By this time it was light enough for the letters to show green, and the Freshmen read the thing.
Up near the top Lee, the class secretary, was called "a puppy drum major" and "Mamma's blue-eyed baby boy, the little toy secretary." In the portion in finer type, beneath the slurs on the baseball team and the arrogant prohibitions against the wearing of the college colors and silk-hats and the smoking of pipes and carrying of canes, Young spied his own name.
"Next in the line of freaks," it said, "will amble that poor, meek butt of all classes, Deacon Young, the overgrown baby of Squeedunk, who always does everything you tell him to, and says 'Thank you, marm!'"
"That means me," thought Young, scowling, as he remembered how important he had always been considered by everyone out at home. "What would they think of me now, I wonder?"
Channing had finished his work.
"Now then," he said, and unfolded another proc and advanced toward the Freshmen. "Don't all speak at once, children; will Little Willie Young show us how they handle the brush when they whitewash the fences on the farm?"