forty-eight hours. Then we could lead him forth, with the colors and his
_art-nouveau_ clothes on, spread the glad news--and there wouldn't have
to be any more rushing that fall. We'd just sit back and take our pick.

We sat back and built brains full of air-castles for about three
minutes--and then got busy. It was matriculation day. There were half a
dozen trains to come yet from Chicago on various roads. We had to meet
them all, pick out the right man by his aura or by the way the porter
looked when he tipped him, and grab him out from under the ravenous foe.
The next train was due in ten minutes and the depot was a mile away. We
sent Crawford down. He was trying for the distance runs anyway.

The rest of us went out to show a couple of classy boys from a big prep
school how to register and find a room, and pick out textbooks; and
incidentally how to distinguish a crowd of magnificent young student
leaders from eleven wrangling bunches of miscellaneous thickheads, who
wouldn't like anything better than to rope in a couple of good men to
teach them the ways of the world. We were succeeding in this to the
queen's taste, having accidentally dropped in on our porch with the
pair, when young Crawford rushed up green with despair and took the
rushing committee inside. He almost cried when he told us. He'd watched
the train as carefully as he could, he said, but he couldn't be
everywhere at once; and so a couple of Mu Kow Moos had got Smith. He
knew it because he had heard them ask what his name was and he had told
them Smith. He'd pretty nearly wrecked his brain trying to think of an
excuse to butt in, but they had taken the boy away and he'd run all the
way to the house to see if something couldn't be done.

Petey Simmons had listened, sitting crosslegged on the windowseat, which
was a habit of his. Petey was a Senior and his deep studies in rhetoric
during his four years in the frat had given him a great power of
expression. He turned to the despairing Crawford and reduced him to a
cinder with one look.

"So you couldn't think of any excuse to butt in!" he remarked slowly,
"Say, Crawford, if you saw a young lady falling through the ice you'd
write to her mother for permission to cheer her up. Which way did they
go?"

"They're coming this way," said what was left of Crawford.

[Illustration: He was so bashful that his voice blushed when he used it
_Page 151_]

Petey grabbed his hat and discharg