Page:Cuthbert Bede--Little Mr Bouncer and Tales of College Life.djvu/124

104 hands out the brandy. So, as I don't like to interfere with the arrangements, I says, "Thankee, sir;" and they has the wine, while I has the brandy. Then they ask me questions about the coaches that I have druv, and about the horses and passengers, and all that. Then says Mr. So-and-so, "You 'd like to smoke a pipe, old buck, I daresay." So I smokes a pipe. Then comes in supper, and hot game and wiands, also warious; and Mr. So-and-so helps 'em all round; and, when he has finished them he says, "Old buck, would you like to pick a bit of pheasant?" Well, sir, that's Cambridge—at least, according to my experience.' So," said Mr. Pewter Potter, as he ended his anecdote, "old White evidently gave the preference to Oxford."

"Old White was a wise man," said little Mr. Bouncer, with a pardonable preference for his own Alma Mater.

Here they were joined by some of the stragglers from the breakfast party that had been given in the room above by Messrs. Bulpit and Smirke; and then they dispersed to their various Colleges, from which, ere the evening had come, they would have gone forth in quest of the pleasures of the Long Vacation.