r
imaginations was worked; for by the time Dyckman was strugglin' through
his last year at college he'd got to be such a full blown hickey boy that
he'd have been spotted for a sport in a blind asylum.

So they had to invent one excuse after another to keep Aunt Elvira from
seein' him, all the while givin' her tales about how he was soon to break
into the divinity school; hoping, of course, that Aunty would get tired
of waitin' and begin to unbelt.

"They overdid it, that's all," says Dyke. "Healthy looking Bishop I'd
make! What?"

"You ain't got just the style for a right reverend, that's a fact," says
I.

Which wa'n't any wild statement of the case, either. He's a tall, loose
jointed, slope shouldered young gent, with a long, narrow face, gen'rally
ornamented by a cigarette; and he has his straw colored hair cut plush.
His costume is neat but expensive,--double reefed trousers, wide soled
shoes, and a green yodler's hat with the bow on behind. He talks with the
kind of English accent they pick up at New Haven, and when he's in repose
he tries to let on he's so bored with life that he's in danger of fallin'
asleep any minute.

Judgin' from Dyke's past performances, though, there wa'n't many
somnolent hours in it. But in spite of all the trouble he'd got into, I
couldn't figure him out as anything more'n playful. Course, rough housin'
in rathskellers until they called out the reserves, and turnin' the fire
hose on a vaudeville artist from a box, and runnin' wild with a captured
trolley car wa'n't what you might call innocent boyishness; but, after
all, there wa'n't anything real vicious about Dyke.

Playful states it. Give him a high powered tourin' car, with a bunch of
eight or nine from the football squad aboard, and he liked to tear around
the State of Connecticut burnin' the midnight gasolene and lullin' the
villagers to sleep with the Boula-Boula song. Perfectly harmless fun--if
the highways was kept clear. All the frat crowd said he was a good
fellow, and it was a shame to bar him out from takin' a degree just on
account of his layin' down on a few exams. But that's what the faculty
did, and the folks at home was wild.

Dyke had been back and on the unclassified list for nearly a year now,
and the prospects of his breakin' into the divinity school was growin'
worse every day. He'd jollied Mr. Mallory into lettin' him have a little
two-cylinder roadster, and his only real pleasure in life was when he
could