`By Gum!' said Stalky. `Our last term's endin' well. Now you cut along an' finish up your old rag, and Turkey and me will help. We'll go in the back way. No need to bother Randall.'
`Don't play the giddy garden-goat, then?' Beetle knew what help meant, though he was by no means averse to showing his importance before his allies. The little loft behind Randall's printing-office was his own territory, where he saw himself already controlling the Times. Here, under the guidance of the inky apprentice, he had learned to find his way more or less circuitously about the case, and considered himself an expert compositor.
The school paper in its locked formes lay on a stone-topped table, a proof by the side; but not for worlds would Beetle have corrected from the mere proof. With a mallet and a pair of tweezers, he knocked out mysterious wedges of wood that released the forme, picked a letter here and inserted a letter there, reading as he went along and stopping much to chuckle over his own contributions.
`You won't show off like that,' said M`Turk, `when you've got to do it for your living. Upside down and backwards, isn't it? Let's see if I can read it.'
`Get out!' said Beetle. `Go and read those formes in the rack there, if you think you know so much.'
`Formes in a rack! What's that? Don't be so beastly professional.'
M`Turk drew off with Stalky to prowl about the office. They left little unturned.
`Come here a shake, Beetle. What's this thing?' said Stalky, in a few minutes. `'Looks familiar.'
Said Beetle, after a glance: `It's King's Latin prose exam. paper. In -- In Verrem: actio prima. What a lark!'
`Think o' the pure-souled, high-minded boys who'd give their eyes for a squint at it!' said M`Turk.
`No, Willie dear,' said Stalky; `that would be wrong and painful to our kind teachers. You wouldn't crib, Willie, would you?'
`Can't read the beastly stuff, anyhow,' was the reply. `Besides, we're leavin' at the end o' the term, so it makes no difference to us.'
`'Member what the Considerate Bloomer did to Spraggon's account of the Puffin'ton Hounds? We must sugar Mr. King's milk for him,' said Stalky, all lighted from within by a devilish joy. `Let's see what Beetle can do with those forceps he's so proud of.'
`'Don't see how you can make Latin prose much more cock-eye than it is, but we'll try,' said Beetle, transposing an aliud and Asiae from two sentences. `Let's see! We'll put that full-stop a little further on, and begin the sentence with the next capital. Hurrah! Here's three lines that can move up all in a lump.'
`"One of those scientific rests for which this eminent huntsman is so justly celebrated."' Stalky knew the Puffington run by heart.
`Hold on! Here's a vol -- voluntate quidnam all by itself,' said M`Turk.
`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 M`Turk, over another forme. `What price a giddy ode? Qui -- quis -- oh, it's Quis multa gracilis, o' course.'