hat if he gits loose he'll come upstairs and furnish material for
nineteen fancy funerals with silver name-plates. But, don't you worry,
Reverend. He can't hurt a fly 'less he gits loose. Here's your room.
That hoss blanket on the cot's brand new; towel's in the hall and you'll
find a comb somewheres round. Just you turn in if you feel like it, and
when you hear Wall-Eye Denton and Pete Pearsall trying to massacre each
other in the next room it's time to git up."

Pubby said he would retire at once, and we left him looking scared but
relieved. I'll bet he sat up all night taking notes and expecting things
to happen. We sat up, too, but for a different reason. You can't imagine
how much work it took to get that house running backward. And it was an
awful job to do the Wild West stunt, too. We sat and criticised each
other's dialect and actions until there were as many as three free
fights going on at once. One man favored the Bret Harte style of bad
man; another adhered to the Henry Wallace Phillips brand; while still
another insisted on following the Remington school. We compromised on a
mixture and then spent the rest of the night learning how to forget our
table manners.

The result was magnificent. I shall never forget the Reverend Pubby's
pained but fascinated expression as he sat at breakfast the next morning
and watched thirty hungry savages shoveling plain, unvarnished grub into
their faces. The breakfast couldn't have gone better if we had had a
dress rehearsal. Our guest couldn't eat. He was afraid to talk. He just
held on to his chair, and we could see him stiffen with horror every
time some eater would rise up so as to increase his reach and spear a
piece of bread six feet away with his fork. The breakfast was a
disgusting display of Poland-China manners and was successful in every
particular.

We confidently expected Petey Simmons to turn up during the meal and
tell us what to do next. He had spent the night with his odoriferous
Rep Rho Beta brothers cooking up the rest of the plot and had promised
to run up at breakfast. But no Petey appeared. We strung the meal along
as far as we could toward dinner and then took up the job of keeping the
Reverend Pubby contented and in the house until the life-saving crew
arrived. Did you ever try to lie all morning with a slow-speed
imagination? That's what we had to do. We explained to Pubby that the
students caroused all night and never came to college in the morning