Page:Cuthbert Bede--Little Mr Bouncer and Tales of College Life.djvu/31

Rh "Precisely!" rejoined little Mr. Bouncer, "I 'll say nothing against Flexible Shanks, for he 's a regular brick; but I expect it was because you were a Freshman that Blucher Boots asked you."

"But, at any rate, it was very friendly and polite of him to invite me to breakfast," argued Mr. Verdant Green, who would have wished it to be thought that the attentions of Lord Balmoral's son were due solely to his personal merits, and were not to be attributed to the fact of his being a Freshman.

"And so you went," said little Mr. Bouncer, "with the tear of gratitude in your eye, and a burst of loyalty in your bosom. Well, and what then? Cut along, my hearty."

"After breakfast," continued Verdant, "the men gradually went away; but he asked me to stop, and have a weed with him; and I did so, because I was all right for Lectures, having posted an Æger."

"Posted an Æger!" echoed Mr. Bouncer. "My gum, Giglamps, you 're coming it, for a Freshman. You pretend to be Æger, or sick and peaky, when you 're in robust health. And then, after your Æger breakfast where, of course, you behaved yourself like a sick man ought to do, and had nothing but tea and dry toast—what came next?"

"Then Blucher Boots and I were left alone, and he was very friendly and pleasant, and asked me about Warwickshire, and places that I knew; and his claret-cup was very nice; and he talked a good deal about horses and races, and the odds."

"Odd if he would n't!" said little Mr. Bouncer, puffing at his cigar; "I know his horsey proclivities. And then he offered to make your Derby book?"