We got a fine view of the janitor as he swept past. He was a regular volcano in pants. Never have I heard the English language more richly embossed with profanity. Firing a fat locomotive up the grades around Siwash with bad coal gives a man great talent in expression. We listened to him with awe. Pubby was entranced. He asked me if it would be safe to take anything down in his notebook, and when I promised to protect him he wrote three pages.
By this time the campus was filling up. Word had gotten around the real college that the big show of the season was being pulled off up at Dillpickle, and the students were arriving by the dozen. We were getting pretty nervous. The new arrivals weren't coached, and sooner or later they were bound to give the snap away. We decided to introduce our guest to the president. If we could keep things quiet another half hour all would be safe, Petey assured us.
We took the Reverend up to the main entrance, Petey's thinker working like a well-oiled machine all the way. He pointed out the tree where they hanged a horse thief, and Pubby made us wait till he had gotten a leaf from it. The Senior classes at Dillpickle had had the custom of hauling boulders on to the campus as graduation presents. Petey explained that each boulder marked the resting place of some student whose career had been foreshortened accidentally, and he described several of the tragedies--invented them right off the reel. Pubby was so interested he didn't care who saw his notebook. When Petey told him how a pack of timber wolves had besieged the school for nine days and nights, four years before, he almost cried because there was no photograph of the scene handy. We had to promise him a wolf skin to comfort him.
Dillpickle Academy was a plain old brick building, with one of those cupolas which were so popular among schools and colleges forty years ago. I don't know just what mysterious effect a cupola has on education, but it was considered necessary at that time. In front of the building was a wide stone porch. Inside we could see half a dozen dogs and a horse. Pubby looked a bushel of exclamation points when Petey explained that they belonged to the president. He looked a lot more when he saw a counter with a fine assortment of chewing tobacco and pipes on it. That, Petey whispered to me, was his masterpiece. He had borrowed the whole thing from a corner grocery store.