And then there was Dashleigh—he could do something. He could play the mandolin and sing divinely. He had been playing just now, and he lightly strummed the strings as the gathered students fell to chatting and joking.
“Dashleigh,” said Jack Ready, posing with assumed grace before the freshman, “your playing is remarkable for its simplicity. Why shouldn’t it be? It is perfectly characteristic of you.”
“You’re a critic of music, I believe!” retorted Bert scornfully.
“Why shouldn’t I be?” came solemnly from the queer sophomore. “I have traveled a great deal with a band.”
“Yes, I have a habit of wearing a band round my hat. Besides that, I have a lovely drum in my ear. Such advantages as those have given me the right to be critical in musical matters.”
“I know a better critic than you who is deaf and dumb,” declared the freshman.
“Poor fellow!” sighed Jack. “Deaf and dumb?”
Dashleigh started to say something, and then flourished his mandolin at Ready, as if to smite him. But the queer fellow waltzed away.
“Say, fellows!” he cried, “I was down to Traeger’s, with Ned Donovan and his friends, last night, and we had a corking good time.”
“By the bottles you had around you when I dropped in there last evening, I fancied you were having an uncorking good time,” observed Berlin Carson.
“Now, that’s not bad for a tenderfoot from the wild and woolly,” nodded Jack, regarding Carson approvingly. “My boy, you are coming. Why, gentlemen, when he struck New Haven he was a walking arsenal! He carried a gun on each hip, three bowie-knives in his belt, two more in his boots, and had derringers in his sleeves. The first night at Old Lady Harrington’s retreat for freshmen he went to bed with his spurs on. Just forgot to unshackle them from his boots, you know. Of course, Mrs. Harrington made a gentle kick in the morning, when she found his spur-tracks in her sheets, and I understand he had to settle for the sheets. That taught him a lesson. After that he remembered to take his spurs off his boots before rolling in. Oh, there’s nothing like experience as a teacher. I have heard that he sometimes removes his boots on going to bed now.”
“That’s all right,” he said. “At least, I don’t do one trick that I hear is customary with you. Fellows, why do you suppose Ready puts his pocketbook under his pillow every night when he goes to bed?”