"Well, I like your nerve! Yes, I used it as a shoe polishing rag," remarked Phil sarcastically. "You'll find it on the blue-tie hook, I should say. Why don't you look there." "Blue-tie hook?" queried Tom. "Yes. You're such an orderly chap," added Phil, as he looked at his chum's disordered side of the room, "that I supposed you had a hook for each tie." "Oh, cut it out," advised Tom, making a perfect shower with a rainbow effect of colored silks, as he looked in vain for the blue article of adornment. "I don't know where in blazes your blue tie is," went on Phil, as he gazed with a puzzled air into a box on his dresser; "but I'd like to know where my garnet cuff buttons are. Have you been sporting 'em, Sid?" "Me? No!" answered the other chum, who was quietly dressing, a task which Tom and Phil seemed to think called for more or less elaborate effort. "But, say, what's getting into you chaps, anyhow? You're togging up as much for the soph picnic as though it was a frat. dance. Are there some damsels in the offing?" "Oh, there are always girls to these affairs," carelessly spoke Tom, as he opened another drawer and began tumbling about his collars and cuffs. "Hang it all, where _is_ that tie, anyhow." "I s'pose nothing but a baby-blue one would suit your fair complexion," remarked Phil, glancing at Tom, who was as brown as an Indian from his out-door life. "It will suit me as well as your cute little garnet cuff buttons will you. I never saw such a fusser! Ah, there's the tie. I remember now, I put it there to hide it away from you chaps," and Tom pulled out a gorgeous affair of silk from inside a cuff. "Speak for yourself, you old fossil!" retorted Phil, who just then discovered his cuff buttons marking a place in his Ovid. "Wonder how in blazes they got there?" he murmured, as he proceeded to put them in his cuffs, while Tom was busy trying to make just the proper knot with the blue tie. "Why are you fellows togging up so?" demanded Sid. "Are you going to take some girls, as well as meet some there?" And, for the first time he seemed to entertain some suspicions of his friends. "Oh, well, Ruth wanted to go," said Phil, as indifferently as he could, "and Tom and I promised to----" "I suppose Miss Tyler is going?" asked Sid quietly. "Yes," assented Tom, his face flushing under its bronze coat, though possibly it was from his exertion in pulling his tie into place. "And so is Miss Harrison," went on Phil, with a desperate effort, as if desirous of getting the worst over. "But you don't need to worry," he added, as he saw Sid sit limply down in a chair. "She probably won't see you, so there need be no embarrassment. I thought it was a pity to have her miss it, especially as Ruth and Madge are going, and she rooms with them. We thought you wouldn't mind, old fellow, but we weren't going to tell you."