ice asked a Government
officer to go out and pacify him. They stepped off the train at the
Union Station and went right up to college--only four blocks away.

Petey and I remained considerably invisible, but the boys tell me that
the look on the Reverend's face when he arrived at the real Siwash was
worth perpetuating in bronze. He went up the fine old avenue, past the
fine new buildings, in a daze; and when our good old Prexy, who had him
skinned forty ways for dignity, shook hands with him and handed him a
little talk that was a saturated solution of Latin, he couldn't even say
"most extraordinary." You can realize how far gone he was.

Some of the boys got hold of the marshal that day and told him the
story. He laughed from four P. M. until midnight, with only three stops
for refreshments. The Reverend Pubby Diggs stayed three days as the
guest of the Faculty and he didn't get up nerve enough in all that time
to talk business. We saw him at chapel where he couldn't see us, and he
looked like a man who had suddenly discovered, while falling out of his
aeroplane, that somebody had removed the earth and had left no address
behind. His baggage mysteriously appeared at his room in the hotel on
the first night, and when he left he hadn't recovered consciousness
sufficiently to inquire where it came from. I think he went right back
to England when he left Siwash, and I'll bet that by now he has almost
concluded that some one had been playing a joke on him. You give those
Englishmen time and they will catch on to almost anything.

CHAPTER VI

THE GREEK DOUBLE CROSS

Suffering bear-cats! Say! excuse me while I take a long rest, Jim. I
need it. I've just read a piece of information in this letter that makes
me tired all over.

What is it? Oh, just another variety of competition smothered with a
gentlemanly agreement--that's all; another bright-eyed little trust
formed and another readjustment of affairs on a business basis. We old
fellows needn't break our necks to get back to Siwash and the frat this
fall, they write me. Of course they'll be delighted to see us and all
that; but there's no burning need for us and we needn't jump any jobs to
report in time to put the brands on the Freshmen and rescue them from
the noisome Alfalfa Delts and Sigh Whoops--because there isn't going to
be any rescuing this fall.

They've had an agreement at Siwash. They're going to approach the
Freshies under strict rules. No partie