Page:Cuthbert Bede--Little Mr Bouncer and Tales of College Life.djvu/207

Rh that they constituted themselves into a gigantic nuisance that could not be tolerated over a second night's stay, without a demand being made from the sufferers for the intervention of the police. Mr. Bouncer, however, was enabled to make such arrangements for the lodgment of his dogs that there seemed a reasonable hope that the sleep of the sojourners in the Old Hummums would not, on that night, be disturbed by the discordant howlings of Huz and Buz.

After luncheon, Mr. Bouncer thought that he would make a call upon Messrs. Stump and Rowdy. They were the individuals who, according to the little gentleman's own language, had got all his tin or property until he came of age, and only let him have money at certain times, because it was tied up, as they facetiously termed it; though, why they had tied it up, and where they had tied it up, Mr. Bouncer had .no more idea than had the two dogs that he had left tied up in the little yard at the rear of the Old Hummums. But, he now desired to extract some "tin" from these gentlemen—his purse, at the end of the Oxford summer term, having shrunk to the smallest dimensions; a circumstance by no means peculiar to Mr. Bouncer. It, therefore, became necessary for him to work the tin-mine, and to extract the highest possible sum from his purse-bearers.

When he had started on his way to Stump and Rowdy's, it occurred to him that his half-cropped head of hair might present an appearance that would be, to say the least, peculiar. In fact, he wondered what effect it had already produced upon the waiters at the Old Hummums, and upon the stately old lady who presided over the bar. He, therefore, decided to turn into the nearest hairdresser's shop, and there to obtain the