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"Not for me," said Grim, beaming cheerfully around; "I'm all right. I'll tell Merishall that the door was locked; but as for you five idiots, who oughtn't to be here at all well! What the dickens did you want to call old Toddy all those fancy names for, you silly cuckoos?" "Oh, look here, Grim, you artful bounder," shouted Poulett, bitterly, "you've got us into this mess.
He turned out, as became a budding poet, weird screeds from Ovid, Virgil, and Horace Bohn's cribs were simple to his tangled stuff and Merishall beamed wreathed smiles upon him, and told him he was "catching the spirit of the original."
When Merishall went, Gus waited until all the form had filed out, and, still dizzy and sick, he wearily followed suit and turned in at his own door. As Gus came into the room some one rose up and faced round to meet him, and Todd found himself once more face to face with Cotton.
Consequently, with nothing to distract him, Gus really did work. His standing in the Fifth sensibly increased. Merishall did not make elaborate jokes on his Latin, and Corker not once let fall the warning eye-glass preparatory to savaging him for his Greek, formerly called so by a courtesy title.
"Thanks, I don't mind," said Gus, airily. "Here's half, then." Cotton left his friend's room considerably puzzled, but when he came next night with his books for his old jackal's attentions as before, he was more than puzzled, for Gus said "Can give you half an hour, Jim." "We won't be able to screw up enough for Merishall in that time, old man." "Then you'll have to do the rest yourself, Jim.
"Well," said Jim, surlily, "what do you want?" "I'll tell you in a minute, old boy. Can I have a chair?" "Can't you see I'm busy?" said Cotton, unamiably. "You look like it, more or less, certainly." "Well, I've no time for any oratory to-night, Philips, and that is all about it." "I'll give you a leg-up for Merishall in the morning if you're decently civil."
After this patent, distinct leg-up from Merishall, Grim took the bit between his teeth and went careering up and down the plains of poesy until the lights were cut off. Wilson bore with his chum for a month, and then finally delivered his ultimatum. "If you're still a poet at midsummer, I'm going to cut, and dig with Rogers or Cherry.
A fortnight passed, and Grim had only put in the regulation practice at the nets to Wilson's intense disgust, and the time that should have been devoted to extra cricket was "wasted," according to that ardent Biffenite, in doing, of all things, needlessly elaborate translations for Merishall. "Whatever is the good of getting the very word the beak wants, Grimmy. I always translate Carmen a song.
Does it matter a cherry-stone that it sometimes means a charm? What good does it do you, you idiot? It only means that Merishall is harder on us. Think of your friends, Grimmy, do. If I didn't know you were a bit cracked, I'd say your performance was undiluted 'smugging."
Jim made the experiment, very gingerly, be it said, but did show up his own work, and from Corker to Merishall all the beaks were civil to him. Gus's reputation as a prophet was established, for Corker himself seemed pleased with the Cottonian version of Herodotus.
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