The Babe went off to dress for dinner much relieved in mind. Now that it was over he confessed to himself that he had been quite certain that Feltham had cheated, but that he should own up to it, was fine, and the Babe who considered himself totally devoid of anything which could possibly be construed into moral courage, respected him for it. He also registered a vow that never to the crack of doom—which cracked three days afterwards—would he play unlimited Marmara again, and told himself that he was not cut out for the sort of thing that he had just been through, and that he was glad it was over. He went round at once to tell Broxton and Anstruther what had happened, and after that shook the whole

affair from his mind, as a puppy shakes itself after being in the water.

He was, naturally, late for dinner, and Mr. Stewart who knew the value of soup and also the habits of the Babe, had not waited. When he did appear, he was, of course, perfectly unabashed, and took the bottom of the table with unassuming grace.

“The psychology of punctuality,” he remarked, “is a most interesting study. Some day I mean to study it, and I shall write a little monograph on the subject uniform with those which Sherlock Holmes wrote on tobacco ash and the tails of cart horses. I think there must be a punctuality bacillus, something like a death-watch, always ticking, and if there isn’t one, I shall invent it. It doesn’t take to me. I am too healthy.”

“My dear Babe,” said the Stewart, “you have disappointed me. I always hoped that you were the one person I have been looking for so long, who has never been punctual; But you have been punctual to my knowledge twice, once on an occasion in the Long——”

“When was that?” interrupted the Babe. “I don’t believe it.”

“On a memorable occasion. At lunch in your own rooms.”

The Babe caught Reggie’s eye, and looked away.

“Oh, yes.”

“And as Clytemnestra, you always killed Agamemnon with ruthless punctuality. I was always hoping to hear him scream during the next Chorus but one.”

“I did the screaming for him,” said the Babe complacently, “except on the first night. He could only scream like an empty syphon.”

“There is nothing more tragic or blood-curdling than the scream of an empty syphon,” said Stewart. “It shrieks to you, like a banshee of all the whisky and soda you have drunk. The only thing that could shriek worse would be an empty whisky bottle, and that can’t shriek at all. If he really could scream like that, you robbed him of a chance of greatness by screaming for him, although you screamed very well.”

“There are syphons and syphons,” said the Babe, “he screamed like an empty but undervitalised one, which had never really been full.”

“Babe, if you talk about undervitalised syphons during fish,” said Reggie, “you will drive us all mad, before the end of dinner.”

“Going mad,” said Mr. Stewart, “is an effort of will. I could go mad in a minute if I wished, and the Babe certainly determined to go mad when he was yet a boy. No offence meant, Babe. I can confidently state that during the three years I have known him, he has never for a moment seemed to be really sane.”

“I was perfectly sane when I settled to go in for the tripos,” said the Babe.

“You never settled to do anything of the kind. You think you did and it is one of your wildest delusions.”

“Secondly I was sane,” said the Babe, “when I—”

“No you weren’t,” put in Reggie.

“Reggie, don’t be like Longridge. But you are quite right. I wasn’t sane then, though I thought I was for the moment.”

“Longridge is better, though he still has a large piece of sticking plaster over his nose,” said Mr. Stewart. “He came to see me to-day. He insisted on arguing with me in spite of my expostulations. When he talks, I always want to cover him up, as one covers up a chirping canary.”

“I wish you would do it some day. With a piece of green baize you know, and a hole in it where the handle of the cage comes out.”

“He would continue to make confused noises within,” said Reggie.

“He always makes confused noises,” said Mr. Stewart wearily. “Confused, ingenious, noises. Babe, tell me if that champagne is drinkable.”

The Babe drank off his glass.

“Obviously,” he said. “But it’s no use asking me: all champagne seems to me delicious. I drink Miller’s cheapest for choice.”

A small withered don who was sitting next the Babe, and had not previously spoken, here looked up.

“A nice, dry, light wine,” he said.

The Babe started violently, and if he had not just emptied his glass of champagne, he would certainly have spilled it. He explained afterwards that he really had forgotten that anyone was occupying the chair on the right.

This curious old gentlemen, one of the few surviving specimens of this particular type of elderly don had the classical name of Moffat, and Mr. Stewart at once introduced him to the Babe, a ceremony which had escaped his memory before, and Mr. Moffat who had been shivering on the brink of conversation all dinner, decided to plunge in.

“I saw your performance of the Agamemnon last week,” he said.

“I hope you enjoyed it,” said the Babe politely.

“The stage is not what it was in me young days,” said Mr. Moffat.

The Babe looked interested and waited for further criticisms, but the old gentleman returned to his dinner without offering any. His face looked as if it was made of cast iron, painted with Aspinall’s buff-coloured enamel.

There was a short silence, and Mr. Stewart, looking up, saw that the Babe was fighting like a man against an inward convulsion of laughter. His face changed from pink to red, and a vein stood out on his usually unwrinkled brow. Stewart knew that when the Babe had a fit of the giggles it was, so to speak, no laughing matter, and he made things worse by asking Mr. Moffat how his sister was. At this point the Babe left the room with a rapid, uneven step, and he was heard to plunge violently into the dishes outside. Stewart had been particularly unfortunate in his choice of a subject, because what had started the Babe off, was the very thought that Mr. Moffat’s sister was no doubt the original Miss Moffat, and he had been rashly indulging in wild conjectures as to what would happen if he said suddenly:

“I believe your sister doesn’t like spiders.”

Mr. Moffat had resumed the subject of the Greek play when the Babe returned—he seemed not to have noticed his ill-mannered exit—and was finding fault with the chorus, particularly with the leader, who, in the person of Reggie, was sitting opposite him. Of this, however, he had not the slightest idea.

“I call them a dowdy crew,” he said. “They were dressed like old baize doors. Not me idea of a chorus at all. But it was all very creditable, very creditable indeed, and we have to thank me young friend here for a very fine performance of Clytemnestra. Why, me sister”—here the Babe gasped for a moment like a drowning man, but recovered himself bravely—“me sister came down next morning at breakfast, and said she’d hardly been able to sleep a wink, hardly a wink, for thinking of Clytemnestra.”

The Babe made a violent effort and checked himself.

“I’m so sorry,” he said, with his most engaging manner. “I hope you will apologise to her for me.”

“Not at all, not at all,” said Mr. Moffat. “It’s me own opinion she slept far more than she knew. But she was always nervous,”—the Babe bit his tongue—“easily upset. A very good pheasant, Mr. Stewart, a very good pheasant. Thank ye, yes, a glass of champagne. A glass of wine with you, heh, heh, Clytemnestra.”

Mr. Moffat, as the Babe allowed afterwards, was a very pleasant old gentleman. When dinner was over and he had settled himself into an arm-chair by the fire, smoking one of Stewart’s strongest cigars, he told several stories about the old generation of dons whom he had known.

“There was an old fellow of King’s” he was saying, “in me undergraduate days, who must have been eighty, and never a night had he spent out of Cambridge since he came up as an undergraduate. An infidel old lot he was. Many a time I’ve seen him in the evening, when the worms were come out on the grass plot, hobbling about and trying to kill them with the point of his stick. He used to talk to them and make faces at them and say, ‘Ah, damn you. You haven’t got me yet.’ A queer lot they all were, not the worms I mean, heh, heh, but the old dons. There were two others who had been great mathematicians in their time, and they used to spend their evenings together doing, what do you think? Making paper boats, sir, which they went and sailed on the Cam next day. They would start them from the King’s bridge, and sail them down to the willow at the other end of the lawn. And such quarrels as they had over which had won! One of them one morning, his name was Jenkinson, if I’m not mistaken, an old Yorkshireman, got so heated over it,—for he said the other boat had fouled his, as if they were racing for a cup,—that he went for the other man, by gad, sir, he went for him, and tried to push him into the river. But the other—his name was Keggs—was too quick for him, and stepped out of the way, and head over ears into the river went Jenkinson himself, being unable to stop himself, sir, by reason of the impetus he had got up. The river isn’t over deep, there, as you know, perhaps two feet deep, and he stood up as soon as he could find his feet and bawled out: ‘Ah misdoot ye’ve drooned me, Keggs.’”

The Babe was delighted.

“Do tell me some more,” he said, when Mr. Moffat had finished laughing himself, which he did in a silent, internal manner.

“Ah, some of those old fellows did things not quite fit for boys to hear about. Maxima reverentia, eh, Mr. Stewart? But there was an Irishman, a fellow of Clare too, in my time. I might tell you about him; he used to live in the rooms above the gate. He had a quarrel with the Master, and as often as the Master went in and out of the gate, egad, the old chap would try to spit on his head. If the Master was out to dinner, he would wait up, sitting in his window till he came back, be it eleven o’clock or twelve, or later than that. At last the Master had to put up an umbrella when he walked under the gate of his own college and then the old fellow would shout out, ‘Come, out o’ that, ye ould divil, and let me get at ye.’ A disreputable old crew they were!—Ah well, it’s half-past ten. Eleven’s me bedtime, and I must be going. Good-night to you Mr. Stewart, and many thanks for your kind hospitality. And good-night to you, sir,” he said turning to the Babe; “I heard them shout ‘Clytemnestra, good old Clytemnestra,’ after you all down the street. And you deserved an ovation, sir, you richly deserved an ovation, and I’m glad you got it.”

After Mr. Moffat’s departure, they settled down again, and Stewart remarked:

“You’ve made a conquest, Babe. But you behaved abominably during dinner.”

“I couldn’t help it. I could think of nothing but Miss Moffat. On the top of that you enquired about his sister. I ask you, what was I to do?”

“You needn’t have danced in the dishes outside,” said Reggie.

“I only danced in the soup, and we’d finished with the soup. And there’s a soupÇon of it on my—”

“Shut up.”

“Pumps,” continued the Babe. “May I have some whisky? Thanks. For what I’m going to receive. What a funny undergraduate Moffat must have been.”

“I believe he was born like that,” said Stewart. “I know when I came up, ten years ago, he was just the same. That’s the best of getting old early: you don’t change any more.”

“That’s one for you, Babe,” remarked Reggie.

“The Babe is the imperishable child,” said Stewart.

“You called me a man of the world the other day,” said the Babe in self-defence.

“I think not.”

“You did really. However, we’ll pass it over.”

“By the way, Babe, you are corrupting the youth of the college. Two men went into their lodgings last night at ten minutes past two. It transpired that they had been playing cards with you.”

“Well, it is true that I was playing cards last night. But they could have gone away earlier if they had wished.”

“Your fascinations were probably too strong,” said Reggie.

“Now you’re being personal, and possibly sarcastic,” said the Babe with dignity. “I must go to bed. I was late last night.”

“The night is yet young, Babe,” said Stewart.

“So am I. But if I don’t go, I shall continue to drink whisky and soda, and smoke.”

“You are welcome. How is the tripos work progressing?”

“Oh, it’s getting on,” said the Babe, hopefully. “A little at a time, you know, but often. I’m not one of those people who can work five hours at a stretch.”

“I suppose not. Is it to be a second or a third?”

“I believe there are three classes in the tripos,” said the Babe stiffly. “You have only mentioned two. Well, yes, perhaps one of your small cigarettes would not hurt me. But I must go at eleven, because I am sapping. Oh, isn’t that the Shop Girl on the table? There are some awfully good songs in it. May I go and get my banjo?”

“Do. I got it expressly for you to sing.”

The Babe slept his usual eight and a half hours that night. He did not awake till 10.30.