"I don't know anything about their private lives," said a mathematical
master hotly, "but I've learned by bitter experience that Number Five
study are best left alone. They are utterly soulless young devils."

He blushed as the others laughed.

But in the music-room there were wrath and bad language. Only Stalky,
Slave of the Lamp, lay on the piano unmoved.

"That little swine Manders miner must have shown him your stuff. He's
always suckin' up to King. Go and kill him," he drawled. "Which one
was it, Beetle?"

"Dunno," said Beetle, struggling out of the skirt. "There was one
about his hunting for popularity with the small boys, and the other
one was one about him in hell, tellin' the Devil he was a Balliol
man. I swear both of 'em rhymed all right. By gum! P'raps Manders
minor showed him both! _I'll_ correct his caesuras for him."

He disappeared down two flights of stairs, flushed a small pink and
white boy in a form-room next door to King's study, which, again, was
immediately below his own, and chased him up the corridor into a
form-room sacred to the revels of the Lower Third. Thence he came
back, greatly disordered, to find McTurk, Stalky, and the others of
the company, in his study enjoying an unlimited "brew"--coffee,
cocoa, buns, new bread hot and steaming, sardine, sausage,
ham-and-tongue paste, pilchards, three jams, and at least as many
pounds of Devonshire cream.