Page:Cuthbert Bede--Little Mr Bouncer and Tales of College Life.djvu/74



ITTLE Mr. Bouncer's guests were continuing their talk concerning the recent examinations, and the various unfortunates who had "come to grief" by the "ploughings" and "pluckings," that, in University parlance, signified rejection and failure. The plucking process seemed to be well-nigh as painful as the plucking of live geese for a few of their wing feathers and the soft down of their breasts—a scene afterwards witnessed by little Mr. Bouncer and Mr. Verdant Green when they were in the Cheviot country on a visit to the Honeywoods; and when they saw it, their lively imaginations converted the old woman into a real college Don, and the poor plucked geese into helpless undergraduates.

"At any rate," said Mr. Blades, commonly known as "Billy," the captain of the Brazenface Boat, "Broughton would not come to grief through too much cleverness, as they say Harwood, of Lincoln, did; for, when the examiners asked him some question on a frightfully abstruse subject, and said, 'What is your opinion