CHAPTER IX

_The Pig in the Parlor_

“The trouble with us,” remarked Winans, kicking his long legs in the air and hurling his book across the room, “is the lack of initiative. We’re dying of dry rot. No one starts anything, and the others fail to finish what he don’t start.”

“What’s the woe?” inquired Kirkland, lounging over his books in a deep chair under the lamp. “You’ve been aching for some deviltry for days. Why don’t you start something?”

“I’ve been virtuous so long I can’t stand it any longer,” said Winans. “Here we are drilling at baseball, trying for the track team, boning on studies like a lot of slaves, and no fun going on at all. If any of you fellows had any nerve we’d set fire to the main building or tie Prexy in a tennis net and toss him into the lake.”

“Why don’t you blow up the old dormitory or put poison in the food at the mess hall?” inquired Larry wearily. “That seems to be your conception of undergraduate humor.”

“Well,” replied Winans slowly, “before I came up from home the governor spent two or three days telling me how he and his crowd put a wagon load of hay on top of the north dorm on Hallowe’en, how they hitched one professor’s cow to a buggy and drove her through the campus, and a few other delicate pranks. He spent hours bragging about all the devilment he pulled off while he was here at Cascade, and warning me against doing the same.”

“Very proper advice,” remarked Kirkland, who had been buried in his mathematics. “The old gentleman seems to have a very high sense of a student’s duty to his alma mater.”

“Yep,” replied Winans carelessly. “I have a sneaking suspicion that if I go home this term without blowing up a laboratory or assaulting a professor the revered Pater will think I am wasting the advantages of higher education and will be vastly disappointed in me.”

“Let’s pull off something that will wake up the whole school,” suggested little Butler. “Something new and unheard of.”

“What are you nefarious schemers plotting?” asked Kirkland, again climbing down from the heights of pure mathematics to the level of his comrades. “I just caught the drift of your remarks. Who do you want to maltreat?”

“Bartelme,” suggested Butler. “Not that I have any dislike for Bart, but we’ve got to have a victim and he’s so confoundedly dignified we ought to reduce him to the ranks. He’s so important since the Seniors appointed him to have charge of the barracks, he makes Prexy look cheap. Let’s do something to good old Bart.”

“What do you suggest?” inquired Winans, still busy trying to kick the headboard of the bed while stretched flat on his back.

“Let’s dope up his bed with cactus splinters,” suggested Butler hopefully.

“Crude and not original,” declared Winans. “My son, if you are going to do anything to render your name famous in this school, you’ll have to think of something more original than that. It is related in ancient history that when Methusalem was a Freshman the Sophomores put cactus needles in his bed. Suggest something else.”

“Let’s steal Herr Schermer’s pig,” suggested Butler.

“My son,” said Winans, sitting up in bed, “you show signs of human intelligence. That would be something to do.”

The quartette of students laughed heartily. Herr Schermer’s pig was one of the campus marvels. Professor Schermer, whose immense head, heavy-lensed glasses and strong Teutonic accents made him one of the notables of the faculty, was professor of biology, and his pig had, during the preceding year, been one of the campus institutions. Gaunt, with ribs showing like the bars of a xylophone, the poor beast had trotted ’round and ’round the small pen beside the biological laboratory squealing dismally, save during the periods each day when the “Herr Professor” Schermer tolled it inside the laboratory and there performed strange and wonderful experiments, accompanied by the distressed squeals of the unfortunate porcine victim, which attracted the attention of the entire campus. It was understood that the “Herr Professor” was conducting these experiments in an effort to test his discovery of a serum to cure hog cholera, and the doleful grunts of the pig the sleek satisfaction of the “Herr Professor” after each session in the laboratory promised success.

The idea of stealing the “Herr Professor’s” beloved pig was enough to startle into action the plotters gathered in the rooms of Winans and Kirkland for the ostensible purpose of study.

“Let’s pignap it to-night,” suggested Winans. “Haul it away and hide it.”

“Hold on a minute,” said Kirkland. “Butler wanted revenge on Bartelme. Why not steal the ‘Herr Professor’s’ pig, lug it into the dorm and put it in Bartelme’s bed.”

“Hooray,” yelled Winans. “Great little idea. Come on fellows. We’ll stir this mossy old school up as it never was stirred before.”

The four rocked to and fro with sheer delight as they elaborated the idea. The thought of the dignified, serious professor mourning his lost and loved pig, and of the sedate and over-dignified student monitor discovering said pig in his bed, was too much for their youthful sense of humor.

Ten minutes later the plotters, reinforced by Trumbull, whose powerful strength was needed to accomplish their purpose, were reconnoitering carefully the surroundings of the biological laboratory, and a scuffle, a few indignant squeals and a chorus of muffled laughter followed. The pig, accustomed as he was to the indignities to which he had been subjected, probably merely wondered mildly what further use science might have for him when a heavy blanket was thrown over his head and, lifted in the arms of the giant athlete, he was bundled over the fence of the pen. His legs quickly were bound, a noose was pulled tightly around his nose to smother the indignant squeals and the snickering brigade bore him in triumph toward the dormitory.

Few students were awake, and the belated ones were poring over their studies under night lights. The reconnoitering party reported that Bartelme’s room was vacant, and that Bartelme was away for the evening, engaged in tutoring some backward Junior in his studies.

With much scuffling and smothered laughter the pig was borne up the back stairs and into the room of the student who was in charge of the youths quartered in that dormitory. An impromptu nightcap was fashioned and tied about the porcine head, one of Bartelme’s nightgowns was adjusted and, with feet securely bound, the “Herr Professor’s” valuable pig was left to his repose between the immaculate sheets of the bed.

The culprits, chuckling and whispering orders to each other to maintain silence, beat a retreat from the dormitory, and once outside, they gathered under the shade of a pepper tree and doubled with laughter over the success of their prank, drawing amusing pictures of what would happen when the dignified Bartelme discovered his roommate.