"I'll attend to her in a shake. _Quidnam_ goes after _Dolabella_.""Good old Dolabella," murmured Stalky. "Don't break him. Vile prose Cicero wrote, didn't he? He ought to be grateful for--""Hullo!" said McTurk, over another forme. "What price a giddy ode? _Qui_--_quis_--oh, it's _Quis_multa_gracilis_, o' course.""Bring it along. We've sugared the milk here," said Stalky, after a few minutes'
zealous toil. "Never thrash your hounds unnecessarily.""_Quis_munditiis_? I swear that's not bad," began Beetle, plying the tweezers.
"Don't that interrogation look pretty? _Heu_quoties_fidem_! That sounds as if the chap were anxious an' excited. _Cui_flavam_religas_in_rosa_--Whose flavor is relegated to a rose. _Mutatosque_Deos_flebit_in_antro.""Mute gods weepin' in a cave," suggested Stalky. "'Pon my Sam, Horace needs as much lookin' after as--Tulke."They edited him faithfully till it was too dark to see.
"'Aha! Elucescebat, quoth our friend.' Ulpian serves my need, does it? If King can make anything out of _that_, I'm a blue-eyed squatteroo," said Beetle, as they slid out of the loft window into a back alley of old acquaintance and started on a three-mile trot to the College. But the revision of the classics had detained them too long. They halted, blown and breathless, in the furze at the back of the gasometer, the College lights twinkling below, ten minutes at least late for tea and lock-up.
"It's no good," puffed McTurk. "Bet a bob Foxy is waiting for defaulters under the lamp by the Fives Court. It's a nuisance, too, because the Head gave us long leave, and one doesn't like to break it.""'Let me now from the bonded ware'ouse of my knowledge,'" began Stalky.
"Oh, rot! Don't Jorrock. Can we make a run for it?" snapped McTurk.
"'Bishops' boots Mr. Radcliffe also condemned, an' spoke 'ighly in favor of tops cleaned with champagne an' abricot jam.' Where's that thing Cokey was twiddlin' this afternoon?"They heard him groping in the wet, and presently beheld a great miracle. The lights of the Coastguard cottages near the sea went out; the brilliantly illuminated windows of the Golf-club disappeared, and were followed by the frontages of the two hotels. Scattered villas dulled, twinkled, and vanished. Last of all, the College lights died also. They were left in the pitchy darkness of a windy winter's night.
"'Blister my kidneys. It _is_ a frost. The dahlias are dead!'" said Stalky. "Bunk!"They squattered through the dripping gorse as the College hummed like an angry hive and the dining-rooms chorused, "Gas! gas! gas!" till they came to the edge of the sunk path that divided them from their study. Dropping that ha-ha like bullets, and rebounding like boys, they dashed to their study, in less than two minutes had changed into dry trousers and coat, and, ostentatiously slippered, joined the mob in the dining-hall, which resembled the storm-centre of a South American revolution.
"'Hellish dark and smells of cheese.'" Stalky elbowed his way into the press, howling lustily for gas. "Cokey must have gone for a walk. Foxy'll have to find him."Prout, as the nearest house-master, was trying to restore order, for rude boys were flicking butter-pats across chaos, and McTurk had turned on the fags' tea-urn, so that many were parboiled and wept with an unfeigned dolor. The Fourth and Upper Third broke into the school song, the "Vive la Compagnie," to the accompaniment of drumming knife-handles; and the junior forms shrilled bat-like shrieks and raided one another's victuals. Two hundred and fifty boys in high condition, seeking for more light, are truly earnest inquirers.
When a most vile smell of gas told them that supplies had been renewed, Stalky, waistcoat unbuttoned, sat gorgedly over what might have been his fourth cup of tea.
"And that's all right," he said. "Hullo! 'Ere's Pomponius Ego!"It was Carson, the head of the school, a simple, straight-minded soul, and a pillar of the First Fifteen, who crossed over from the prefects' table and in a husky, official voice invited the three to attend in his study in half an hour. "Prefects'
meetin'! Prefects' meetin'!" hissed the tables, and they imitated barbarically the actions and effects of the ground-ash.
"How are we goin' to jest with 'em?" said Stalky, turning half-face to Beetle. "It's your play this time!""Look here," was the answer, "all I want you to do is not to laugh. I'm goin' to take charge o' young Tulke's immorality--_a'_la_ King, and it's goin' to be serious.
If you can't help laughin' don't look at me, or I'll go pop.""I see. All right," said Stalky.
McTurk's lank frame stiffened in every muscle and his eyelids dropped half over his eyes. That last was a war-signal.
The eight or nine seniors, their faces very set and sober, were ranged in chairs round Carson's severely Philistine study. Tulke was not popular among them, and a few who had had experience of Stalky and Company doubted that he might, perhaps, have made an ass of himself. But the dignity of the Sixth was to be upheld. So Carson began hurriedly: "Look here, you chaps, I've--we've sent for you to tell you you're a good deal too cheeky to the Sixth--have been for some time--and--and we've stood about as much as we're goin' to, and it seems you've been cursin' and swearin'
at Tulke on the Bideford road this afternoon, and we're goin' to show you you can't do it. That's all.""Well, that's awfully good of you," said Stalky, "but we happen to have a few rights of our own, too. You can't, just because you happen to be made prefects, haul up seniors and jaw 'em on spec., like a house-master. We aren't fags, Carson. This kind of thing may do for Davies Tertius, but it won't do for us.""It's only old Prout's lunacy that we weren't prefects long ago. You know that,"said McTurk. "You haven't any tact."
