o and play your old bridge
or something--leave the wretched Bunnin' to his prayers."

Lawrence and Olva moved away.

3

The first thing that Lawrence said when they were lounging comfortably
in his worn but friendly chairs hit Olva, expecting peace here at any
rate, like a blow.

"Fellers have forgotten Carfax damn quick."

In that good-natured face there was no suspicion, but Olva seemed to see
there a curiosity, even an excitement.

"Yes," he said, "they have."

"Fellers," said Lawrence again, "aren't clever in this College. They get
their firsts in Science--little measly pups from Board Schools who don't
clean their teeth--and there are one or two men who can row a bit and
play footer a bit and play cricket a bit--I grant you all that--but
they _aren't_ clever--not what I call clever."

Olva waited for the development of Lawrence's brain.

"Now at St. Martin's they'll talk. They'll sit round a fire the whole
blessed evenin' talkin'--about whether there's a God or isn't a God,
about whether they're there or aren't there, about whether women are
rotten or not, about jolly old Greece and jolly old Rome--_I_ know.
That's the sort o' stuff you could go in for--damn interestin'. I'd like
to listen to a bit of it, although they'd laugh if they heard me say so,
but what I'm gettin' at is that there ain't any clever fellers in this
old bundle o' bricks, and Carfax's death proves it."

"How does it prove it?" asked Dune.

"Why, don't you see, they'd have made more of Carfax. Nobody said a
blessed thing that any one mightn't have said."

Lawrence thought heavily for a moment or two, and then he brought out--

"Carfax was a stinker--a rotten fellow. That's granted, but there was
more in it than just Carfax. Why, any one could give him a knock on the
chin any day and there's no loss, but to have a feller killed in Sannet
Wood where all those old Druids---"

As the words came from him Lawrence stopped.

"Druids?" said Olva.

"Why, yes. I wish I were a clever feller an' I could say what I mean,
but if I'd been a man with a bit of grey matter that's what I'd have
gone in for--those old stones, those old fellers who used to slash your
throat to please their God. My soul, there's stuff there. _They_ knew
what fighting _was--they'd_ have played footer with you. Ever since I
was a tiny kid they've excited me, and if I'd been a brainy feller I'd
have known a lot more, but the minute I start reactin' about them I
ge