William."
"I should think so. There's nothing unusual the matter with me. Cæsar was bald. It's idiotic to bar a man out because he has fewer hairs than the next man. And the exasperating part of it is that I believe I could win her if I had half a chance."
"Of course you could. If she's any good as a sport, she'd rather have you, hairless myopiac that you are, than a tailor's dummy."
Sayre said: "Isn't it a terrible thing, Curtis, to think of that sweet, lovely young girl pledged to a scientific life like that? P-pledged to p-p-propagate p-p-perfection?"
"What a mean-spirited creature that fellow Willett must be," observed Langdon in disgust; "and the other three – Ugh!"
"Why?"
"To tamely submit to being kidnapped and woo'd and wed that way – endure the degradation of a captivity among all those young girls – "
Sayre said: "Would you call for help if kidnapped?"
Langdon gazed into space: "I wonder," he murmured.
Sayre looked at him searchingly.
"I don't believe you'd make the welkin ring with your yelps. It's probably the same with those four men."
"Probably."
"I don't suppose those suffragettes of the New Race University really require any fence there to keep those men in."
"No; only to keep the rest of us out."
"The chances are that Willett and that poet Carrick and De Lancy Smith and Alphonso W. Green couldn't be chased out of that University."
"Those are the chances. How I hate those four men. It's curious, William, that no man can ever tolerate the idea of any other man ever getting solid with any looker. I always did dislike to see another man with a pretty girl… William?"
"What?"
"Think of the concentrated beauty in that University! Think of that rich round-up of creamy dreams! Consider that mellifluous marmalade! And – we can't have any – because you are slightly bald and near-sighted and I am thin and scholarly!" He ran at the camp-kettle and kicked it.
After a painful silence Sayre said timidly: "Don't laugh, but is there any known substance which will bring in hair?"
"You mean bring it out?"
"Well, dammit, grow it! Is there?"
"There are too many bald monarchs and millionaires to prove the contrary. Nor is there anything that can make my thin shanks fatter."
" – I'd be willing to go about without glasses," said Sayre humbly. "I told her so."
"Couldn't you deceive her with a wig? It wouldn't matter afterward. After you're once married let her shriek."
"Amourette saw my head." And he hung it in bitter dejection.
"Come on," said Langdon cheerily. "Let's peek through their fence and see what happens. Much has been done with a merry eye in this world of haughty ladies."
As they turned away into the woods Sayre clenched his fists.
"I'd like to knock the collective blocks off those four young men inside that fence. And – to think – to think of Amourette going out again to-morrow, man hunting, with her net! I can't endure it, Curt – I simply can't."
Langdon looked at his friend in deep commiseration.
"I wish I could help you, William – but I don't see – I – don't – exactly – see – " He hesitated. "Of course I could go to Utica and pay a wig-maker and costumer to make me up into the kind of Charlie-Gussie they're looking for at that University… And when your best girl goes out hunting, she'll see me and net me, and you can be in hiding near by, and rush out and net her."
In their excitement they seized each other and danced.
"Why not?" exclaimed Langdon. "Shall I try? Trust me to come back a specimen of sickening symmetry – the kind of man women write about and draw pictures of – pink and white and silky-whiskered! Shall I? And I'll bring you a net to catch her in! Is it a go, William?"
Sayre broke down and began to cry.
"Heaven bless you, friend," he sobbed. "And if ever I get that girl inside a net she'll learn something about natural selection that they p-p-probably forgot to teach in their accursed New Race University!"
V
ONE week later Curtis Langdon sat on the banks of a trout stream fishing, apparently deeply absorbed in his business; but he was listening so hard that his ears hurt him.
A few yards away, ambushed behind a rock on which was painted "Votes for Women," lurked William Sayre. A net lay on the ground beside him, fashioned with ring and detachable handle like a gigantic butterfly net.
He, too, tremendously excited, was listening and watching the human bait – Langdon being cast for the bait.
Perfect and nauseating beauty now marked that young gentleman. Features and figure were symmetrical; his eyebrows had been pencilled into exact arcs, his mouth was a Cupid's bow, his cheeks were softly rosy, and a silky and sickly moustache shadowed his rosy lips. Under his fashionable outing shirt he wore a rubber chest improver; his cunningly padded shoulders recalled the exquisite sartorial creations of Mart, Haffner, and Sharx; his patent puttees gave him a calf to which his personal shanks had never aspired; thick, golden-brown hair, false as a woman's vows, was tossed carelessly from a brow, snowy with pearl powder. And he wore a lilac-edged handkerchief in his left cuff.
Both young men truly felt that if any undergraduate of the New Race University was out stalking she'd have at least one try at such a bait. Nothing feminine and earnest could resist that glutinous agglomeration of charms.
But they had now been there since before dawn; nothing had broken the sun-lit quiet of forest and water, not even a trout; and they listened in vain for the snapping of the classical twig.
Lunch time came; they ate a pad apiece. Neither dared to smoke, Sayre because it might reveal his hiding place, Langdon because smoking might be considered an imperfection in the University.
Sunlight fell warm on the banks of the stream, the leaves rustled, big white clouds floated in the blue above. Nothing came near Langdon except a few mosquitoes, who couldn't bite through the make-up; and a small and inquisitive bird that inspected him with disdain and said, "cheep – che-ep!" so many times that Langdon took it as a personal comment and almost blushed.
He thought to himself: "If it wasn't that William is actually becoming ill over his unhappy love affair I'm damned if I'd let even a dicky-bird see me in this rig. Ugh! What a head of hair! The average girl's ideal is what every healthy man wants to kick. I wouldn't blame any decent fellow for booting me into the brook on sight."
He bit into his pad and sat chewing reflectively and dabbling his line in the water.
"Poor old William," he mused. "This business is likely to end us both. If we stay here we lose our jobs; if we go back William is likely to increase the nut crop. I never supposed men took love as seriously as that. I've heard that it sometimes occurred – what is it Shakespeare says: 'How Love doth make nuts of us all!'"
He
