me, if you like."

"Who have I the honour?" inquired Hardie, assuming politeness sudden and
vast.

"Badham, of Wadham."

"Badham o' Wadham? Hear that, ye tuneful nine! Well, Badham o' Wadham,
you are no acquaintance of mine; so you may possibly not be a fool. Let
us assume by way of hypothesis that you are a man of sense, a man of
reason as well as of rhyme. Then follow my logic. Hardie of Exeter is a
good man in a boat when he has not got a headache.

"When he has got a headache, Hardie of Exeter is not worth a straw in a
boat.

"Hardie of Exeter has a headache now.

"Ergo, the university would put the said Hardie into a race, headache and
all, and reduce defeat to a certainty.

"And, ergo, on the same premises, I, not being an egotist, nor an ass,
have taken Hardie of Exeter and his headache out of the boat, as I should
have done any other cripple.

"Secondly, I have put the best man on the river into this cripple's
place.

"Total, I have given the university the benefit of my brains; and the
university, not having brains enough to see what it gains by the