“He shall be a Bishop!” says she, and hints that accordin’ as Dyckman shows progress along that line she intends loadin’ him up with worldly goods.
Up to the age of fifteen, Dyke gives a fair imitation of a Bishop in the bud. He’s a light haired, pleasant spoken youth, who stands well with his Sunday school teacher and repeats passages from the Psalms for Aunt Elvira when she comes down to inflict her annual visit.
But from then on the bulletins wa’n’t so favor’ble. At the diff’rent prep. schools where he was tried out he appeared to be too much of a live one to make much headway with the dead languages. About the only subjects he led his class in was hazing and football and buildin’ bonfires of the school furniture. Being expelled got to be so common with him that towards the last he didn’t stop to unpack his trunk.
Not that these harrowin’ details was passed on to Aunt Elvira. The Mallorys begun by doctorin’ the returns, and they developed into reg’lar experts at the game of representin’ to Aunty what a sainted little fellow Dyke was growin’ to be. The more practice they got, the harder their imaginations was worked; for by the time Dyckman was strugglin’ through his last year at college he’d got to be such a full blown hickey boy that he’d have been spotted for a sport in a blind asylum.
So they had to invent one excuse after another to keep Aunt Elvira from seein’ him, all the while givin’ her tales about how he was soon to break into the divinity school; hoping, of course, that Aunty would get tired of waitin’ and begin to unbelt.
“They overdid it, that’s all,” says Dyke. “Healthy looking Bishop I’d make! What?”
“You ain’t got just the style for a right reverend, that’s a fact,” says I.
Which wa’n’t any wild statement of the case, either. He’s a tall, loose jointed, slope shouldered young gent, with a long, narrow face, gen’rally ornamented by a cigarette; and he has his straw colored hair cut plush. His costume is neat but expensive,—double reefed trousers, wide soled shoes, and a green yodler’s hat with the bow on behind. He talks with the kind of English accent they pick up at New Haven, and when he’s in repose he tries to let on he’s so bored with life that he’s in danger of fallin’ asleep any minute.
Judgin’ from Dyke’s past performances, though, there wa’n’t many somnolent hours in it. But in spite of all the trouble he’d got into, I couldn’t figure him out as anything more’n playful. Course, rough housin’ in rathskellers until they called out the reserves, and turnin’ the fire hose on a vaudeville artist from a box, and runnin’ wild with a captured trolley car wa’n’t what you might call innocent boyishness; but, after all, there wa’n’t anything real vicious about Dyke.
Playful states it. Give him a high powered tourin’ car, with a bunch of eight or nine from the football squad aboard, and he liked to tear around the State of Connecticut burnin’ the midnight gasolene and lullin’ the villagers to sleep with the Boula-Boula song. Perfectly harmless fun—if the highways was kept clear. All the frat crowd said he was a good fellow, and it was a shame to bar him out from takin’ a degree just on account of his layin’ down on a few exams. But that’s what the faculty did, and the folks at home was wild.