chased each other round the apple trees, and the black gelding watched
them by the wall, its ears well forward.

While they were dressing they discovered it was half-past one, and
became instantly famished. "We should have brought lunch along," they
told each other. But they forgot that no such thing as lunch could have
induced them to delay their escape from Cambridge for a moment this
morning. "What do you suppose Oscar is doing now?" Billy inquired of
Bertie, as they led the black gelding back to the road; and Bertie
laughed like an infant. "Gentlemen," said he, in Oscar's manner, "we
now approach the multiplicity of the ego." The black gelding must have
thought it had humorists to deal with this day.


Oscar, as a matter of fact, was eating his cheap lunch away over in
Cambridge. There was cold mutton, and boiled potatoes with hard brown
spots in them, and large picked cucumbers; and the salt was damp and
would not shake out through the holes in the top of the bottle. But
Oscar ate two helps of everything with a good appetite, and between
whiles looked at his notes, which lay open beside him on the table. At
the stroke of two he was again knocking at his pupils' door. But no
answer came. John had gone away somewhere for indefinite hours and the
door was locked. So Oscar wrote: "Called, two p.m.," on a scrap of
envelope, signed his name, and put it through the letter-slit. It
crossed his mind to hunt other pupils for his vacant time, but he
decided against this at once, and returned to his own room. Three
o'clock found him back at the door, knocking scrupulously, The idea of
performing his side of the contract, of tendering his goods and standing
ready at all times to deliver them, was in his commercially mature mind.
This time he had brought a neat piece of paper with him, and wrote upon