There were only three weeks more to the end of the term, but as soon as the play was over, the Babe at once settled down again to his social and historical duties. With December a hard frost had set in, and football for a time was at a standstill. But next to football as an after lunch amusement, the Babe preferred above everything else a warm room, a large chair, and congenial company. With these objects in view he asked Reggie and Ealing to lunch with him one day, and entirely refused to go out afterwards. Reggie, who had a sort of traditional notion that people always went out after lunch, or else they were ill, was overruled by the Babe, who sent his gyp out to order muffins for tea, and drew his chair close up to the fire.

“But it’s such a jolly day, Babe,” said Reggie, who was only half persuaded.

The Babe looked out of the window and shuddered.

“By that you mean that there is a horrid smell of frost in the air, that the sun looks like a copper plate, and that by walking very fast and putting on woollen gloves you can get completely warm, with the exception of the end of your nose. I hate woollen gloves, I hate walking fast, and I hate the tip of my nose to be cold. I avoid all these things by sitting by the fire.”

“Fuggy brute.”

“About my being a brute,” said the Babe, “there may be two opinions. But fuggy, as you call it, I am. I confess it, and I glory in it. At the same time I’m no fuggier than you. If you had your way you would go a nasty walk in order to get fuggy. We both want to be fuggy, and I merely adopt the easiest method of becoming so. Dear Reggie, you are so very English. You love taking the greatest possible trouble to secure your object. That is called the Sporting Instinct. Personally I am not troubled with a sluggish liver, but if I was I should take a pill. That would not suit English people at all: instead of taking a pill, they take exercise, purely medicinally, and they always adopt the most circuitous ways of taking it. What can be a more elaborate method of guarding against a sluggish liver than spending three thousand pounds on building a tennis court, which can only be used by two people at a time?”

“What do you play Rugger for, then?”

“Why, because it is the most expeditious way possible of getting exercise. You concentrate into an hour the exercise you couldn’t get under half a day if you went a walk.”

“I have known you get keen about it,” said Reggie. “Was that only because you admired the expedition with which you were getting exercise?”

The Babe yawned.

“We’ll change the subject,” he said. “I’ve been asked to your Comby on the 6th. I don’t know why a college should celebrate the birthday of their founder by making scurrilous rhymes about each other, but I’m quite glad that they should, and I have very kindly consented to come.”

“Thanks, awfully,” said Ealing.

“Don’t mention it. But really it’s a very interesting point, as Longridge would say. You all go to chapel, and they sing ‘Zadok the priest.’ Then you have a big feed in Hall, and the whole college assembles together, and they libel each other in decasyllable couplets. Luckily there’s no rhyme to Babe.”

“There are heaps,” said Reggie precipitously.

“I think none. Talking of Longridge, he is supposed to be perfecting a plan by which, as you walk up to your door you tread on a spring, and the door flies open. He says it is so tiresome to open a door when your hands are full. And his hands always are full.”

“It sounds very pleasant,” said Reggie. “Has he tried it yet?”

“Only once. That time his door was already open, and when he trod on the spring, it shut with, I believe, quite incredible violence and knocked all his books out of his hands, besides hurting him very much and breaking his spectacles. You’d think that would stop him? Not a bit. He merely rose on the stepping-stone of his dead self to higher things. It only gave him another new idea. He is going to have a second spring inside the door, which, when trodden on will shut it again after you. At least that’s what he means to do, when he is fit to walk about again. At present he is incapacitated. I went to see him yesterday; his nose is in splints. I am so glad I haven’t an ingenious mind.”

“I wouldn’t be Longridge’s bed-maker, if I was paid for it.”

“Bed-makers are paid for it,” said the Babe. “Besides, as he truly says, if you can have a dumb waiter why not have a dumb bed-maker made of some stronger material?”

“He never said anything of the kind, Babe,” said Ealing.

“My dear chap, he has said lots of things of the kind. You force me to contradict you. He hardly ever says anything of any other kind.”

“Babe, will you or will you not come out?” demanded Reggie.

“I will not come out. I’m not going to spoil my tea by going for a horrid walk.”

“I wish you would listen to reason.”

The Babe murmured something inaudible about there being no reason to listen, but when pressed, confessed that he had been reading the Green Carnation and it had affected his brains.

But Reggie, following, as the Babe said, “that blind instinct which makes us Englishmen what we are”—he was taking liberties with the remarks made by his fellow-guest at the T.A.F.—insisted on going out and taking Ealing with him, though promising to come back for tea, and the Babe was left to himself.

He was conscious of feeling a little flat, now that the Greek play was over, and he half wondered to himself what he had done before it began, to get through the time. For instance, to-day it was barely half-past three, he was not going to dine till eight, and he had already done as much work as he meant to do. He thought bitterly that Dr. Watts had very much overrated Satan’s powers of invention. The upshot was that he fell asleep and Reggie and Ealing returning an hour later found him stewing contentedly in front of the fire.

The Babe was rather cross at being awakened, and he said they smelt horribly frosty. Also he wished the door to be shut, and he was very hungry. Why were they so unkind, and what had he done to deserve this? But the muffins came before long, and the Babe recovered his admirable serenity under the cheering influence of most of them.

“And though your muffin,” he remarked, “is said to destroy the coats of the stomach, no such ill effects will be experienced if the patient takes enough of them. My only misgiving is that I have not taken enough. And yet I have taken all.”

“How much dinner do you suppose you will be able to eat?” asked Reggie, who was still gazing incredulously at the empty dish which the Babe had put on the table close to him.

“As much as Stewart will be kind enough to give me. And his board is usually plentifully spread. If he asks me to dinner much oftener I shall feel bound in common gratitude to tell him the truth about my royal visitor in the Long. I wish I’d had a photograph of the group taken, Jack really looked too splendid.”

“Jack has the makings of a comedian about him,” said Reggie, “but just now he’s very serious. There is an epidemic of sapping abroad, but if it wasn’t sapping, it would probably be influenza, so we can’t complain. You’re touched with it, Babe, and Jack’s got it badly. I went to see him yesterday, and he was analysing the second Punic war in a large square note-book with notes on the Wasps at the other end.”

“I know. And he was quite angry when I ventured to speak disrespectfully of Hannibal. He called me a funny ass, and implied that Hannibal was more than a father to him. Also he has taken to red ink which is one of the worst signs. I went into his room in the dark one day last week, and upset something. It proved to be a stone bottle of red ink, rather larger than a ginger-beer bottle and quite full. Also the cork was out, and after that there was no further need for the cork. It would have been like locking the stable door when the steed was spilt—I mean, stolen. I pointed that out to him, for it was surely consoling to know that no more red ink could be spilt in his rooms, unless he was rash enough to buy some more, in which case, so to speak, it would have been on his own head, which would be worse than on the carpet, but he only murmured, ‘Caius Flaminius Secundus,’ and asked if I was sitting on his classical dictionary.”

“And were you?”

“I think it turned out that he was. So I called him a sap, and went away.”

“I hate a sap,” said Reggie with a certain dignity.

“We used to call a sap a groutbags at my private school,” said Ealing.

“Why?”

“I don’t know what else you could call them. I was a groutbags once myself.”

The Babe yawned.

“I feel rather futile,” he said. “I wanted to be amused, and you fellows would go for a walk. Let’s play ‘Kiss in the slipper,’ or something.”

“I hear you played Van John till two this morning,” said Reggie.

The Babe stopped in the middle of his yawn.

“Yes, a little after two, I think. We played Van John and other things. I lost six pounds. Blow the expense. Do you know Feltham of this college?”

“No, why?”

“Oh, nothing. He was there, that’s all.”

“Nice chap?”

“Nothing particular. Oh, yes, quite nice, I should think, but he went away as soon as we shut up playing. I hardly know him—in fact I never met him before. Hullo, it’s seven. I must go.”

“Where are you going?”

“Only to see a man I know, as the Apostles say. Are either of you dining with Stewart to-night?”

“Yes, I am,” said Reggie. “At eight, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Be punctual, because I’m so hungry.”