Page:Cuthbert Bede--Little Mr Bouncer and Tales of College Life.djvu/307

Rh Willoughby, Collins, and I, having hunted, and idled, together for the last twelve months, had taken it into our heads to forswear Suppers and "Wines;" and, in their stead, to open our cob-webbed Lexicons, to spread over the table with Greek Plays and Aldrich, and old "Thicksides" (as we profanely called "Thucydides"), and to start a reading "coach," of which I was constituted the "unicorn," or leader. Like all similar coaches, we went off at a slapping pace, scarcely staying for meals; and at the end of a fortnight found ourselves so blown, that we were fain to bait with a wine party. This threw us back at least a week, and when we had started once more, we found we were obliged to retrace our steps over a good deal of the road along which we had come so merrily. In another fortnight just as we had got into condition again, and were beginning to pick up flesh, Term ended. So we held a virtuous debate, in which it was unanimously agreed upon, that the Christmas festivities, and pretty girls we should meet at home, would most undeniably and effectually disperse the heavier classical and logical awkward-squad we had with so much difficulty marshalled into our respective brains. The stern resolution was therefore adopted, that the Reading Coach should run through the Christmas Vacation; and the next day we got the necessary licence to allow this.

When we had seen the last team of men off from the Mitre, and the last train leave the Station, and had walked up the deserted High, and had come back across the now dreary and silent Quad, of Brazenface to my snug rooms, we sat down by the firelight, and there talked as Martyrs may have talked—as Curtius may have talked, the night before he leapt into the pit in the