was her
eyes.

We gave Ole three cheers and carried Miss Spencer upstairs on the
evergreen boughs. The two were the hits of the party. We never had a
better one. The incident broke more ice than we could have chopped out
in a month with all the dull-edged talk we had been handing around.
Every one had a good laugh by way of a general introduction and then we
all turned in and made things hum. The wall-flowers got plucked.
Somebody taught the president of the Y. M. C. A. how to waltz and poor
Henry Boggs forgot for two hours that he had hands and feet, and that
they were beyond his control. It was a tremendous success; we were so
enthusiastic by the time things broke up that we told the cabmen to go
hang and all walked home to the Hall, the men fighting for a chance to
pull on the sledge-rope with Ole.

Hold on, Sam. Put down your hat. This isn't the end, thank you. It's
just the prologue. Of course we all expected, when Ole unloaded Miss
Spencer at the Hall and she bade him good evening, and thanked him for
her delightful time and so on, that the incident would be closed. Never
dreamed of anything else. Lumber-jack suits and cordwood sledges are
fine for novelties, but they can't come back, you know--once is enough.
And that's why we fell dead in rows when Ole, straw hat and all, walked
over to Lab. from chapel with Miss Spencer the next day--and she didn't
call for the police. We couldn't have stared any harder if the college
chapel had bowed and walked off with her. And we hadn't recovered from
the blow when Friday night rolled around and those of us who went to
call at the Hall found Ole seated in Frankling's particular corner,
entertaining Miss Spencer with an average of one remark a minute, which,
so far as we could hear, consisted generally of "Aye tank so" and "No,
ma'am."

By this time we had decided that Frankling was sulking and that Miss
Spencer was showing him that if she wanted to be friendly with Ole, or
the town pump, or the plaster statue of Victory in the college library,
she had a perfect right to. I guess she showed him all right, too, for
after a couple of weeks he surrendered and then the queerest rivalry
Siwash had ever seen began. Frankling, son of the locomotive works,
authority on speckled vests and cotillons, was scrapping with Ole
Skjarsen, the cuffless wonder from the lumber camps, for the affections
of the prettiest girl in college. No wonder we got so interested that
spring that most of