'Where's your prose, Corkran?' 'Well, sir, we haven't quite done it
yet.' 'We'll bring it in a minute,' and so on. And the same with the
others."

"There's great virtue in that 'we,'" said little Hartopp. "You know I
take them for trig. McTurk may have some conception of the meaning of
it; but Beetle is as the brutes that perish about sines and cosines.
He copies serenely from Stalky, who positively rejoices in
mathematics."

"Why don't you stop it?" said Prout.

"It rights itself at the exams. Then Beetle shows up blank sheets, and
trusts to his 'English' to save him from a fall. I fancy he spends
most of his time with me in writing verse."

"I wish to Heaven he would transfer a little of his energy in that
direction to Elegiaes." King jerked himself upright. "He is, with the
single exception of Stalky, the very vilest manufacturer of
'barbarous hexameters' that I have ever dealt with."

"The work is combined in that study," said the chaplain. "Stalky does
the mathematics, McTurk the Latin, and Beetle attends to their
English and French. At least, when he was in the sick-house last
month--"

"Malingering," Prout interjected.

"Quite possibly. I found a very distinct falling off in their 'Roman
d'un Jeune Homme Pauvre' translations."