"It isn't like him in the least. No one would ever know who it was. It makes him look like a prize-fighter," cried Josephine.
"They've no right to print his picture at all; it'll do the boy a serious injury by leading him to believe there is nothing else in the world worth thinking about but foot-ball," I asserted. "What right have they to do it?"
"Pooh, Cousin Fred," said Sam. "It's nothing but ordinary newspaper enterprise. They print everybody's portrait nowadays, from the common murderer up. Your ox is gored this time, that's all. Cheer up, old man—Rah! rah! rah! Harvard!"
"I never supposed they would make him look like that, or I wouldn't have let Fred have the photograph to give them," said Josephine, forlornly.
"Do you mean that you gave it to them?" I asked, in horror.
"It was to Fred I gave it. He said that his picture was to appear with the others, and that he must have a photograph. But they have made him much the worst looking of them all. It's a libel on the dear boy."
I was saved from intemperate language by the sudden advent of Mrs. Guy Sloane, in whose custody appeared the Rev. Bradley Mason, our spiritual adviser. They were both breathless with haste, occasioned, as we shortly learned, by the necessity imposed on our beloved pastor of marrying a couple before he could escape from his fold.
"If I had ever dreamed that you would come, Mr. Mason, I should have sent you an invitation myself," said Josephine, whose delight, as I perceived, was tinged with jealousy.
"I planned it as a delirious surprise," interjected Mrs. Sloane. "I knew you would be only too glad to have him if there was room. I dare say you thought I was a little mysterious over the telephone last night, Mr. Bangs," she added with a blithe twist of her neck in Sam's direction.
"I am a thorough believer in the efficacy of manly sports on character," I heard Mr. Mason remark to my wife. "They cannot be too much encouraged by us all."