The Babe was lying at the bottom of a Canadian canoe on his back, singing low to his beloved. At least he was not exactly singing, but swearing gently at Sykes, who had laid himself down on his stomach and the day was too hot to have bulldogs on one’s stomach. The Babe about an hour ago had landed to see if Reggie was in, and finding his rooms empty and ungarnished, tied his canoe up to the bank to sleep and read a little Ravenshoe for an hour, but it had slipped its cable and as he had left the paddle on the bank it had required only a few moments reflection to convince him that he was hopelessly and completely at the mercy of the winds and waters, like DanaË, the mother of Perseus, in her wooden chest, and that his destiny was no longer in his own hands. As then, there was nothing whatever to be done, he did nothing in serene content. He would soon bump against the arches of Clare Bridge, but until that happened there was no step he could possibly take.

It was just three days before his tripos began, and the Babe, with a wisdom beyond his years, was taking three complete holidays. He argued that as it already seemed to him that his brain was one turbid mass of undigested facts and dates, the best thing he could do was not to swallow more, but to let what he had settle down a little. For a fortnight before he had been working really hard, going over the ground again, and for the next three days he meant neither to think nor do anything whatever. As he expressed it himself after last Sunday morning chapel, “I am going,” he said “to eat and sleep and do and be simply that which pleases me.”

He was roused by a loud injured voice not far off shouting, “Look ahead, sir,” and he sat up. His boat, as is the ineradicable habit of Canadian canoes, had drifted broadside across the river and was fouling the course of an outrigger which was wanting to come up.

“I’m very sorry,” shouted the Babe, “but I’ve lost my paddle. Hallo, Feltham, is that you?”

“It’s me, Babe. What can I do for you, and what do you mean by fouling my waterway? Where is your paddle?”

The Babe looked round.

“Oh, it’s up there on the bank, by the King’s Bridge. Can’t I catch hold of the tail of your boat, then you might tow me up there?”

“All right, but don’t call it a tail, as some rowing man will hear you and have a fit. Let me get clear. Are you slacking, to-day?”

“Yes, and for the next two days. My tripos begins on Monday, and I think that if I do nothing for a day or two I may be able to remember again who the Electric Sophia was.”

“Is she important? She sounds as if she might be the wife of the man who discovered lightning.”

“Don’t confuse me further,” said the Babe. “Where are you off to?”

“Oh, up the river. There’s no cricket to-day.”

“I didn’t know that people who played cricket ever rowed.”

“They don’t for the most part: but I don’t consider that a reason for not doing so if I wish.”

“Are you playing for the ‘Varsity on Monday?”

“They have been polite enough to ask me.”

“And you have very civilly consented. Well, good-bye.”

The Babe sat in his canoe for half an hour or more, and got through a little Ravenshoe, and a little meditation. The meditation concerned itself chiefly with Feltham, who, as was universally acknowledged, was the best of good fellows, quiet, steady, thoroughbred. And these things gave the Babe some pleasure not ill-deserved, to think over, for Feltham had been known primarily as a friend of his. And when he was tired of meditating he tied up his canoe again and walked up to the King’s field, for his college was playing King’s and he was certain of finding company, whichever side was in. It turned out that King’s was in that enviable position, and of King’s, Reggie and a careful little man in spectacles. Reggie could not by the most partial of his friends be called a cricketer, but the most impartial of his enemies would have had to confess that he often made a great many runs. He had a good eye, he saw the ball and he helped it to fulfil its destiny by hitting it hard. More particularly did he hit balls on the off which ought to be left alone, and he always hit them high in the air over long slip’s head. It really did not seem to matter where long slip was placed, for he always hit the ball over his head, and out of reach. Straight balls he subjected to a curious but very vigorous mowing process, which took them swiftly past the umpire’s nose. A straight yorker invariably got him out, if he knew it was a yorker and tried to play it, so that when he saw one coming he held his bat perfectly firm and rigid and quenched it, but if it did not occur to him that the ball was a yorker he treated it with cheerful contempt and hit it somewhere, which surprised no one more than himself. It seemed to be the recognised thing that he should be given three lives as at pool, and, as at pool, if he used them up quickly, he was frequently allowed to star, and have two more. A sort of extra square leg, specially designed for his undoing, had just given him his fourth life when the Babe appeared, and Reggie scored three runs over it. The field luckily could be arranged solely with a view to catching him, for the careful little man in spectacles only scored singles, and those by hitting balls with extreme caution just out of reach of cover-point.

The Babe enjoyed watching cricket, especially the sort of game that was going on now. One bowler was extremely fast, the other incredibly slow, and Reggie hit them both in the air with perfect impartiality, and the careful little man played them both with as much precision and delicacy, as if he was playing spillikins.

However, a few overs later, though his own score was small, he did Reggie, and so, indirectly his side, a signal service. The latter had hit a fast ball almost quite straight up in the air and extremely high, and they both started on a forlorn run. Point and wicket-keep both ran to it, and the careful little man charged violently in between them exactly at the crucial moment, as they were both standing in front of his wickets, with the result that out of the midst of chaotic confusion the ball fell innocuously to the ground. The careful little man went to the pavilion for a new pair of spectacles after being given “not out” for obstructing the field, which he certainly had been doing, and point and wicket-keep cursed him and each other, and Reggie thanked them all.

This was the last ball of the over, so Reggie still had the bowling. The slow bowler prepared for him a ball with an immeasurable break from the off upon it, but Reggie very wisely danced gaily out onto the middle of the pitch, turned straight round and hit it so severe a blow that the wicket-keep in whose direction it was travelling had only just time to get out of the way. It narrowly missed Reggie’s own wicket, but a miss is as good as four runs when it is hit hard enough, and this one was.

But the service he often did his side, and was doing now, could not be fairly measured merely by the runs he scored, for the demoralising effect he always had on the field was worth fifty extra. After a certain number of catches have been missed, and a large number of balls hit high in the air just out of reach of a field, a side begins unconsciously to think “Kismet” and withal to grow discontented, and a side that thinks “Kismet” is lost.

Reggie was out seventh wicket down, having made sixty-two, and as there was only another half-hour to the drawing of stumps, he left the game, and walked down with the Babe. They were going to dine together and go to the theatre to see a touring Mrs. Tanqueray. To the Babe’s great delight the “theatrical tuft-hair” was in great force, and between the acts he wandered about in the passage listening rapturously to the fragments of their conversation.

There was one in particular, who had sat next the Babe, markedly worthy of study. His gown was about eighteen inches long, and his cap, out of which he had carefully abstracted every particle of board, drooped gracefully at all its corners. He was in dress clothes with a smoking coat (not in a Norfolk jacket,) and he wore a large diamond solitaire, and a red cummerbund. He was evidently a king among his kind, and several of them crowded round him as he came out between the acts and admired him. They called him “Johnny,” and he called them “Johnny” individually, and “Johnnies” collectively, and the Babe listened to them with a seraphic expression of face.

“Arfly parful, isn’t it? I say, Johnny, give me a light.”

“Old Redfarn’s put up a notice about not smoking in the passage. I shall rag him about it.”

“That gurl’s pretty good, isn’t she? Looks rather nice too.”

“You’re quite mashed on her, old chappie. But she’s not a patch on Mrs. Pat.”

“Johnny can’t think of anything but Mrs. Pat. I say, let’s go and have a drink.”

“All right. Johnny stands drinks. The gurl at the bar’s an awful clipper.”

“Johnny will drop his pipe and get her to pick it up for him.”

“Well, come on, you Johnnies. There’s only ten minutes. Keep an eye on Johnny.”

The Babe’s eye followed them as they walked off to the bar, with rapturous enjoyment.

“Aren’t they heavenly?” said he to Reggie. “Oh, I wish I was like that! It must be so nice to feel that one is the light and leading of the whole place and really knows what life is. I wish I knew what life was. I wonder how they get their hair to stick out like that. How I have wasted my time! I too might have been a Johnny by now, if I’d cultivated them. Reggie, do come to the bar: I want to gaze and gaze on them.”

But Reggie refused: he said they made him sick, and the Babe told him that he regarded things from the wrong standpoint.

“You know,” said the Babe, “they’ve persuaded each other that they are the very devils of fellows. They really believe it. What a thing it is to have faith. They will talk quite fluently to the barmaid. I remember so well trying to see whether I could. I couldn’t: I knew I couldn’t all the time. I have never felt so hopelessly bored in so few minutes. They think it’s wicked; and they think that they rag their tutors. The poor tutors are men of no perception, for they haven’t the least idea they are being ragged. There they all come again. Their faces shine with deviltry. Did you hear them talk about Mrs. Pat? They meant Mrs. Patrick Campbell you know—”

“You’re no better, Babe,” said Reggie, “you used to want people to think you wicked.”

“Oh, but that’s quite different. You can’t say that I was ever the least like a Johnny. I never had the courage. Fancy being as brave as they are, and oh, fancy deliberately sitting down and taking all the stuffing out of your cap in order to be a blood!”

“I’ll take yours out, if you’ll take mine, Babe. There’s the bell. We must go in again.”

The Babe went to see Stewart when he went back to Trinity. The latter thoroughly approved of his holiday.

“You are giving yourself a little space,” he said, “in which it may be hoped you will forget, or rather assimilate, a few of the useless and ugly things which our system of examinations has compelled you to learn. A historian is not a person who knows masses of facts and dates, but a man who has built a structure upon them. The facts are the scaffold, which disappears when the house is built. And the tripos turns out a quantity of promising young men who can only build scaffolds. I wish I was examining. There should be no questions with dates in them, and they should all begin “Trace the tendency,” or “Indicate in a great many words the influence.”

“I wish I felt more certain about my scaffold.”

“My dear Babe, don’t vex your soul. Possess it in peace. I would give long odds on your getting through. What I did not expect was that you should have taken the distasteful steps that lead to so immaterial a result. You got a second in your last May’s didn’t you? Do let us talk of something a little more interesting than triposes.”

“Well, I didn’t introduce the subject,” said the Babe.

“What have you been doing this evening?”

“I’ve just been to the Second Mrs. Tanqueray with Reggie.”

“An interesting medical case,” remarked Stewart. “I believe the author consulted an eminent nerve doctor, as to how many months’ living with Aubrey Tanqueray would drive an excitable female to suicide. He thought six, but as the author wished her to do it in less, he had to introduce other incentives. Aubrey Tanqueray would drive me to madness in a week, and to suicide in eight days. He handed her toast at the scene at breakfast, as if he was giving her a slice of some cardinal virtue with the blessing of the Pope spread on it like butter. The real motif of the play, though the British public haven’t known it, is her growing despair at being wedded to him, and the immediate cause is the Second Mr. Tanqueray’s noble forgiveness of her when she was found to have tampered with the letter bag. He treated her like a candidate for confirmation, instead of boxing her ears, and said that the incident only served to draw them closer together, or something of the kind. Apparently if you commit a sufficiently mean action towards a person who really loves you, he will be delighted, and love you the more for it. It sounds a little Jesuitical, baldly stated. Who wrote the play? Pinero wasn’t it. Pinero is obviously the future from ‘Pinsum,’ I am a pin.”

The Babe laughed.

“I didn’t attend to the play much,” he said. “There was an undergraduate sitting next me, who was more interesting. He wore a red cummerbund.”

“Ah, yes,” murmured Mr. Stewart. “The kind that talks to the female in tobacconists’ shops, and sits on the counter as it does so. Its father is usually one of nature’s gentlemen, who has married a perfect lady. The two always marry each other, and in the next generation the females dress in Liberty fabric, and the males congregate at the smaller colleges. They are on the increase. I suppose it’s an instance of the survival of the filthiest.”

Mr. Stewart rose from his chair, and crossed over to the window-seat where the Babe was sitting.

“What can I do to amuse you, Babe?” he said. “I feel that it is the duty of all your friends to distract your thoughts from all subjects for the next two days. Shall I play cards with you—you shall teach me—or shall we talk about the Epsom meeting, or the A.D.C.? I suppose you are going to act in the May week? Why not act Hamlet, and we will persuade Longridge to be Ophelia. There is something sublimely inconsequent in the way Ophelia distributes artificial flowers to the company which reminds me of Longridge in his soberer moments. I have been very much tried by Longridge to-night. He asked me to help him to sing glees in the Roundabout. Can you imagine Longridge and me sitting side by side in the Roundabout singing “Three Blind Mice?” I could imagine it so vividly that I didn’t go.”

The Babe laughed.

“You can give me whisky and soda, and then I shall go to bed. It is twelve, and I must practise being dressed and breakfasted by nine. Does it require much practice?”

“I should think about twenty minutes every morning. What is the use of doing a thing you have got to do, before you have got to do it? It is like cutting yourself with a knife to accustom yourself to a surgical operation.”

“There are points of similarity,” said the Babe. “I shall go to bed now for all that, as soon as I’ve drunk this.”