Page:Cuthbert Bede--Verdant Green married and done for.djvu/97

Rh "crams," that had been gleaned by him from those various fields of knowledge from which the true labourer reaps so rich and ripe a store. Huz and Buz reposed on the counterpane, to complete this picture of Reading for a Pass.



"The top o' the morning to you, Giglamps!" he said, as he saluted his friend with a volley of smoke—a salute similar as to the smoke, but superior, in the absence of noise and slightness of expense, to that which would have greeted Mr. Verdant Green's approach had he been of the royal blood—"here I am! sweating away, as usual, for that beastly examination." (It was a popular fallacy with Mr. Bouncer, that he read very hard and very regularly.) "I thought I'd cut chapel this morning, and coach up for my Divinity paper. Do you know who Hadassah was, old feller?"

"No! I never heard of her."

"Ha! you may depend upon it, those are the sort of questions that pluck a man;" said Mr. Bouncer, who thought—as others like him have thought—that the getting up of a few abstruse proper names would be proof sufficient for a thorough knowledge of the whole subject. "But I'm not going to let them gulph me a second time; though, they ought not to plough a man who's been at Harrow, ought they, old feller?"

"Don't make bad jokes."

"So I shall work well at these crams, although, of course, I