“I guess I’ll go along and see the fun!” said Starbright good-humoredly, though his heart was panting against Dade Morgan. Then to himself, as he moved on with Dashleigh and another freshman who had been caught in the sophomore net, he said:
“I’ll see Morgan after this thing is over, whatever it may be. I’ll see him, ask him some questions, and get the answers, too!”
The howling mob gave way, and Starbright saw a large picture of the rotund proprietor of “Billie’s,” the freshman inn. It was a mere daub on wood, displaying the round stomach and the shining, bald head of the genial proprietor. It had been painted by some humorous student and placed in front of “Billie’s” one night in lieu of a sign-board which some other student or students had stolen. The proprietor, knowing the ways of college youths, had smiled his benediction on it and set it up over the show-case between his two front parlor windows.
And now this gem of art had been surreptitiously extracted from the tavern, and all the freshmen caught in the sophomore drag-net that jubilant, crisp evening were being made to go down on their knees before it and affectionately kiss the bald head.
Morgan was hurt and indignant. He somehow fancied that, because he was conspicuous as a leader of the freshmen and had done many things to draw about him a circle of adherents, he should not be forced to do so humiliating a thing as to kneel on the frosty sand and plant an unctuous kiss on the pictured bald head.
“Oh, you didn’t half-salute Billie!” Bingham declared, giving Morgan a push that almost drove his nose through the wood on which the portrait was drawn. “If you should plant a kiss like that on the ruby lips of your best girl she would have odious opinions of you.”
“Oh, let up!” Morgan growled. “This is too silly for anything!”
“Except freshmen!” said Bingham. “Salute the bald spot of the human billiard-cue in a respectful manner, or——”
Two or three sophomores caught Morgan by the neck and shoulders and forced his lips to the picture, and held him there, in spite of his protestations, while he kissed Billie’s bald head over and over again. When released he was mad clean through.
Starbright was pushed up to the daub, murmuring, though he was known never to drink: