`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 flavour 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 over 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 M`Turk. `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 M`Turk.
`"Bishops' boots Mr. Radcliffe also condemned, an' spoke 'ighly in favour 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 chorussed, `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 butterpats across chaos, and M`Turk 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 batlike 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!'