Hicks, the lovable, impulsive, and irrepressible, with his invariable sunny disposition, his generous nature, and his democratic, loyal comradeship for everybody, was loved by old Bannister. The students forgave him his pestersome ways, his frequent torturing of them with banjo-twanging and rollicking ballads. His classmates idolized him, Juniors and Sophomores were his true friends, and entering Freshmen always regarded this happy-go-lucky youth as a demigod of the campus.
Big Butch Brewster, who was forever futilely lecturing the heedless Hicks, thrust his head from the grub-shack window, fought down a grin, and sternly arraigned his graceless comrade:
"Hicks, you frivolous, campus-cluttering, infinitesimal atom of nothing, you labor under the insane delusion that college life is a continuous vaudeville show. You absolutely refuse to take your Bannister years seriously, you banjo-thumping, pillow-punishing, campus-torturing nonentity. You will never grasp the splendid opportunities within your reach! You have no ambition but to strum that banjo, roar ridiculous songs, fuss up like a tailor's dummy, and pester your comrades, or drag them down to Jerry's for the eats! You won't be earnest, you Human Cipher, Before you entered Bannister, you formed your ideas and ideals of campus life from colored posters, moving-pictures, magazine stories, and stage dramas like 'Brown of Harvard'; you have surely lived up, or down, to those ideals, you--"
"Them's harsh words, Butch!" joyously responded the grinning Hicks, unchastened, for he knew good Butch Brewster would not, for a fortune, have him forsake his care-free nature. "Thou loyal comrade of my happy campus years, what wouldst thou of me?--have me don sack-cloth and ashes, strike 'The Funeral March' on my golden lyre, and cry out in anguish, _'ai! ai_! 'Nay, nay, a couple of nays; college years are all too brief; hence I shall, by my own original process, extract from them all the sunshine and happiness possible, and by my wonderful musical and vocal powers, bring joy to my colleagues, who--_Ouch_, Butch--look out for that nail, you inhuman elephant--"
Big Butch, at that juncture of Hicks' monologue, had effectively terminated it by leaning from the window, grasping his unsuspecting comrade by the scruff of the neck, and dragging him over the window-ledge, into the grub-shack, and the presence of Coach Corridan and Deacon Radford. Strenuous objection was registered, both by the futilely struggling Hicks, and a nail projecting from the sill, which caught in the Palm Beach trousers and ripped a long rent in them; fortunately, Hicks' anatomy escaped a similar fate.
