Page:Hornung - Fathers of Men.djvu/92

 One morning, however, as Jan was about to join the rest, Chips burst in upon him, out of breath, and stood with his back to Jan's bare wall.

"They've gone and got a crib!" he gasped.

"What of?"

"Thicksides."

"And a jolly good job!" said Jan.

Chips looked as though he distrusted his ears.

"You don't mean to say you'll use it, Tiger?"

"Why not?"

"It's so—at least I mean it seems to me—so jolly unfair!"

Chips had stronger epithets on the tip of his tongue; but that of "pi" had been freely applied to himself; and it rankled in spite of all his principles.

"Not so unfair as sending you to a hole like this against your will," retorted Jan, "and putting you two forms too high when you get here."

"That's another thing," said Chips, for once without standing up for the "hole," perhaps because he knew that Jan had called it one for his benefit.

"No; it's all the same thing. Is that beast Haigh fair to me?"

"I don't say he is"

"Then I'm blowed if I see why I should be fair to him."

"I wasn't thinking of Haigh," said Chips. "I was thinking of the rest of the form who don't use a crib, Tiger."

"That's their look-out," said the Tiger, opening his door with the little red volume of Thucydides in his other hand.

"Then you're going to Shockley's study just the same?"