Page:Cuthbert Bede--Little Mr Bouncer and Tales of College Life.djvu/306



'LL never do so again! If I do, may I be plucked for my "Greats!" And that, my Masters, is a big oath; for this is the Oxonian for "Great Go;" which in its turn, is the equivalent for the "Examination in literis humanioribus for the degree of B.A." So that you may suppose I am terribly in earnest when I say, I 'll never do so again!

When I came to the resolution of staying up in Oxford during the short Christmas Vacation, and spending Christmas-day in the deserted halls of Brazenface, I had no suspicion that I should be left there as solitary as Robinson Crusoe. I had not the most remote idea that I should be the monarch of all I surveyed; that my right there could be none to dispute; that, to the Master's Lodge over the way, I should be the only poor desolate brute. But so it was! And relentless fate must have had a delightful time of it, when she saw me register that resolution.