uld squeeze one more into
our car. We'll be off in another five minutes."
"What _do_ you mean, Sam? What is it?" asked Josephine, as she seized
and held to the light the newspaper which he was extending.
I looked over her shoulder and broke into a cold perspiration at
beholding an execrable three-quarters length cut of my darling son
superscribed by his name in holograph.
"It's an indecent outrage," I hissed.
"It isn't like him in the least. No one would ever know who it was.
It makes him look like a prize-fighter," cried Josephine.
"They've no right to print his picture at all; it'll do the boy a
serious injury by leading him to believe there is nothing else in the
world worth thinking about but foot-ball," I asserted. "What right
have they to do it?"
"Pooh, Cousin Fred," said Sam. "It's nothing but ordinary newspaper
enterprise. They print everybody's portrait nowadays, from the common
murderer up. Your ox is gored this time, that's all. Cheer up, old
man--Rah! rah! rah! Harvard!"
"I never supposed they would make him look like that, or I wouldn't
have let Fred have the photograph to give them," said Josephine,
forlornly.
"Do you mean that you gave it to them?" I asked, in horror.
"It was to Fred I gave it. He said that his picture was to appear with
the others, and that he must have a photograph. But they have made him
much the worst looking of them all. It's a libel on the dear boy."
I was saved from intemperate language by the sudden advent of Mrs. Guy
Sloane, in whose custody appeared the Rev. Bradley Mason, our spiritual
adviser. They were both breathless with haste, occasioned, as we
shortly learned, by the necessity imposed on our beloved pastor of
marrying a couple before he could escape from his fold.
"If I had ever dreamed that you would come, Mr. Mason, I should have
sent you an invitation myself," said Josephine, whose delight, as I
perceived, was tinged with jealousy.
"I planned it as a delirious surprise," interjected Mrs. Sloane. "I
knew you would be only too glad to have him if there was room. I dare
say you thought I was a little mysterious over the telephone last
night, Mr. Bangs," she added with a blithe twist of her neck in Sam's
direction.
"I am a thorough believer in the efficacy of manly sports on
character," I heard Mr. Mason remark to my wife. "They cannot be too
much encouraged by us all."
"It is very kind of you to say so," said Josephine, with
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