“Oh, what a night!” exclaimed Slim Jones. “Home was never like this!”
“Well, you fellows can sit up the rest of the night if you want to,” said Joe, after a pause; “but I’m going to put my foot to bed.”
“I guess that’s the best place for all of us,” agreed Ricky. “Come on, fellows; I have got some hard practice to-morrow. I may be called to the ’varsity.”
“Like pie!” jeered Slim Jones.
“Oh, ho! Don’t you worry,” taunted Ricky. “I’ll make it.”
There was a sensation the next morning. It seemed that a well-known and very literary professor, returning from a lecture from out of town, before a very learned society, had slipped and fallen on his own front porch, going down in some greasy red paint that had been smeared over the steps.
The professor had sprained a wrist, and his clothing had been soiled, but this was not the worst of it. He had taken with him, on his lecture, some exceedingly rare and valuable Babylonian manuscripts to enhance his talk, and, in his fall these parchments had scattered from his portfolio, and several of them had been projected into the red paint, being ruined thereby. And, as the manuscripts had been taken from the Yale library, the loss was all the more keen.
“I say, Joe, did you hear the news?” gasped Ricky, as he rushed into his friend’s room, just before the chapel call.
“No. Is there a row over the shampooing?”