She was a small girl, but her sense of the ridiculous was tremendous. All summer long she sat on the sand and was nice to two boys, a sub-freshman and a sophomore. The sub-freshman's name was Valiant; he had a complexion that women envied, he was small and dainty and smelled sweet. The other, whose name was Buckley, was bigger and much more self-assertive.
One day the girl decided it would be fun to make them hate each other, and after that, when they were all three together, the sophomore would tell her how hard his class would haze the freshman in the Fall, while the sub-freshman only gazed out over the water and smiled. But one day the sophomore made a remark about "pretty pink-cheeked boys," which had better been left unsaid. Then arose the younger one and shaking impressively a slender pink-nailed finger he spoke, "You had better not try to haze me, Will Buckley."
In the good old days you had only to casually drop a word to a freshman on the way to recitation to wait for you when evening came, and he would turn up promptly, take his little dose meekly and go back to bed a better boy for it. But all that is changed now.
Twice had Buckley waited near the house where Valiant ate his dinner. He had tried several ways of getting into the house where Valiant lived, but without success; then for three successive nights he waited in an alley near by; on the third night Valiant came, but with him an upper classman friend. Buckley kept in the shadow but Valiant called out, "Oh, is that you, Mr. Buckley? How do you do? Aren't you coming in to see me?" Which was decidedly fresh.
"Not now, I'll drop in later. Which is your room?"
"That room up there, see?"
The next night Buckley got his gang together. They decided that a dip in the canal would be excellent for Valiant's health; if he felt cold after that he could climb a telephone pole for exercise. It was nearly two o'clock when they carried a ladder into the alley way. This was a particularly nervy go. A young professor and his young wife had a suite of rooms in this house; it was moonlight, and a certain owl-eyed proctor was pretty sure to pass not far away; but if they hurried they thought they could send a man up and get away without being caught.
Buckley was to get in the window, which was open, it being a warm night, the others were to hustle away with the ladder, and wait for him at a street several blocks distant. There was no doubt but that Valiant would have to come with him.
Buckley climbed up, got one foot over the sill, and was in the room. He leaned out and raised his hand. Silently the ladder disappeared. He turned and started across the room; when a soft voice said, "Is that you, dear?"
Then before all the blood in his body had time to freeze, he stepped out of the moonlight into the shadow and whispered, "Shsss!" Instinct made him do this.