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Keg had gone out the second evening of Commencement week to bring a little pleasure into the barren life of a girl who hadn't been shown any attention by any one for upward of four hours. The rest of the boys were also away scattering seeds of kindness in a similar manner, and so I was alone when Pa Rearick stumped up the walk to the chapter-house porch and glared at me.
As for himself, he was going to leave college and go to herding hens somewhere over two thousand miles from the Faculty. So we left it to Rearick and went home to sleep and dream murderous dreams about meeting profs in lonesome places. The first thing I saw next morning when I went out of the house was a handbill on a telegraph pole. It was printed in red ink.
I went on smoking a cigarette in my most abandoned style and saying all I had to say, which was nothing. After a while Pa Rearick glared over at me again in a most belligerent manner. "Is he well?" he asked. "Finer'n silk," I answered, most disrespectfully.
Sounds fiddling now, doesn't it? But I admired you for it then. I really looked up to you, Bill, as a man with a firm, fixed purpose, while I was just a trifler who would be satisfied to steal the hands of the clock or jolly it into striking two hundred times in a row. There was Rearick, for instance. He was the smartest man in our class.
Nowadays people pay him five thousand dollars apiece for ideas, but he used to fork them out to us gratis and they had twice the candle-power. As soon as we saw Rearick begin to perspire we just knocked off and sat around, and it wasn't two minutes before he was making a speech. "Fellows," he said, "we're due for a cleaning to-morrow. It's official. The Faculty has ordered it.
"Most of the time," said I. "He runs the college in his odd moments." "He wouldn't have run the Siwash I went to," said Pa Rearick grimly. "No," said I, "you egregious timber-head, he'd have spent his time limping after Homer." But as I said it only to myself, no one was insulted. "Has he learned anything?" said old Hostilities, after some more silence.
"Took the Sophomore Greek prize this year," I said, blowing one of the most perfect smoke rings I had ever achieved. "I don't believe it," said Pa Rearick deliberately. I blew another ring that was very fair, but it lacked the perfect double whirl of the first one.
"Wh-wh-wh-whowhowwy not!" said Pa Rearick, with perfect self-possession but some difficulty. "Because I like this college and I'm going to stay here," said Keg. "I'm standing well in my studies and I'm learning a lot all around." "All I have to say is this," said Pa Rearick.
And he was given to understand that, when he finally arrived, the nearest substitute to a fatted calf that would be prepared for dinner would be a plate of cold beans in the kitchen with the hired man. "You may stay here and dawdle with your worthless companions if you desire," shouted Pa Rearick to a man in an adjoining county. "The lesson may be a good one for you.
The halfback went over the goal line. The Kiowa delegation didn't know whether to go crazy with joy or disgust. Our end of the grandstand clapped its hands pleasantly. Down in the Faculty box one or two of the professors, who hadn't forgotten everything this side of the Fall of Rome, wiggled uneasily and got a little bit red behind the ears. The teams changed goals and Rearick kicked off again.
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