Verdant found his bed-room inconveniently small; so


[56 ADVENTURES OF MR. VERDANT GREEN]

contracted, indeed, in its dimensions, that his toilette was not
completed without his elbows having first suffered severe abrasions.
His mechanical turnip showed him that he had no time to lose, and the
furious ringing of a bell, whose noise was echoed by the bells of
other colleges, made him dress with a rapidity quite unusual, and
hurry down stairs and across quad. to the chapel steps, up which a
throng of students were hastening. Nearly all betrayed symptoms of
having been aroused from their sleep without having had any spare
time for an elaborate toilette, and many, indeed, were
completing it, by thrusting themselves into surplices and gowns as
they hurried up the steps.

Mr. Fosbrooke was one of these; and when he saw Verdant close to him,
he benevolently recognized him, and said, "Let me put you up to a
wrinkle. When they ring you up sharp for chapel, don't you lose any
time about your absolutions, - washing, you know; but just jump into a
pair of bags and Wellingtons; clap a top-coat on you, and button it
up to the chin, and there you are, ready dressed in the twinkling of
a bed-post."

Before Mr. Verdant Green could at all comprehend why a person should
jump into two bags, instead of dressing himself in the normal manner,
they went through the ante-chapel, or "Court of the Gentiles," as Mr.
Fosbrooke termed it, and entered the choir of the chapel through a
screen elaborately decorated in the Jacobean style, with pillars and