Boarding schools -- Juvenile fiction; Boys -- Juvenile fiction; Football -- Juvenile fiction
The painted back drop had given way to a curtain of white cloth. In
front of it stood a large oblong frame of wood covered with gilt paper.
Behind the latter, like a picture in its frame, stood Bacon on a little
white-draped dais impersonating a Yale oarsman. His costume was a blue
sleeveless jersey with a white Y stitched on it, white trunks,
turned-down socks and rowing shoes. In his right hand he supported an
oar with a blue blade. A gas pipe had been run around the inner side of
the frame and the dozens of little jets threw a brilliant light on the
motionless figure. The applause was instant and hearty. Bacon kept the
pose for a minute while the orchestra played "Boola," and then the
curtain fell again. Presently it went up to reveal Roy in his crimson
sweater, moleskin trousers, crimson stockings and tan shoes. A white H
adorned the front of the sweater and under his arm was a football. Again
the applause, quite as hearty as before, while the strains of "Up the
Street" came from the orchestra.
Chub, who came next, represented a Princeton baseball player, striped
stockings on his sturdy legs, gray shirt over his black jersey, a gray
cap set rakishly over his smiling face and a mask and ball under his
arm. The applause seemed to be more a tribute to Chub, the captain of
the Ferry Hill Nine, than to the picture he made or the college he
represented. After the music of "Old Nassau" had ceased the curtain fell
once more. Then followed Warren as a Cornell oarsman, Gallup as a
Columbia tennis player and Tom Forrest, with a sixteen-pound hammer
behind him, poised for a throw. Forrest wore Dartmouth's colors and made
an unmistakable hit.
But the audience was agog for the next picture. Harry had devised the
tableaux and had insisted upon being allowed to appear as Vassar. And
although to Jack and Chub and Roy a girl's college had seemed out of
place on the programme, yet they were too grateful to Harry for her
assistance to think of refusing her. And when the curtain rolled up for
the last time they were all very glad they hadn't. For Harry was the
success of the evening.
She was standing two-thirds-face to the audience, a black mortar-board
cap on her head, a flowing black gown reaching to her feet and a book
under her arm. The pose was grace itself. But the crowning glory of the
picture was Harry's hair. She had coiled it at the back of her little
head, thereby adding several years to her apparent age, and the intense
light of the sizzling gas-jets made it glow and shimmer like red gold. A
very bright, happy and demure-looking Vassar student she made, and a
pretty one, too. Roy, watching from the wings, could hardly believe that
the smiling, grown-up young lady in front of him was the red-haired
little minx who had "sassed" him so sharply in the stable yard that
first day of their acquaintance!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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