ed contempt for the rather mediocre, deliberately humorous,
consciously gentlemanly and consciously wild undergraduate men who
made up the mass of Cambridge life. After the manner of youth we were
altogether too hard on our contemporaries. We battered our caps and
tore our gowns lest they should seem new, and we despised these others
extremely for doing exactly the same things; we had an idea of ourselves
and resented beyond measure a similar weakness in these our brothers.

There was a type, or at least there seemed to us to be a type--I'm a
little doubtful at times now whether after all we didn't create it--for
which Hatherleigh invented the nickname the "Pinky Dinkys," intending
thereby both contempt and abhorrence in almost equal measure. The Pinky
Dinky summarised all that we particularly did not want to be, and also,
I now perceive, much of what we were and all that we secretly dreaded
becoming.

But it is hard to convey the Pinky Dinky idea, for all that it meant so
much to us. We spent one evening at least during that reading party upon
the Pinky Dinky; we sat about our one fire after a walk in the
rain--it was our only wet day--smoked our excessively virile pipes, and
elaborated the natural history of the Pinky Dinky. We improvised a
sort of Pinky Dinky litany, and Hatherleigh supplied deep notes for the
responses.

"The Pinky Dinky extracts a good deal of amusement from life," said some
one.

"Damned prig!" said Hatherleigh.

"The Pinky Dinky arises in the Union and treats the question with a
light gay touch. He makes the weird ones mad. But sometimes he cannot go
on because of the amusement he extracts."

"I want to shy books at the giggling swine," said Hatherleigh.

"The Pinky Dinky says suddenly while he is making the tea, 'We're all
being frightfully funny. It's time for you to say something now.'"

"The Pinky Dinky shakes his head and says: 'I'm afraid I shall never be
a responsible being.' And he really IS frivolous."

"Frivolous but not vulgar," said Esmeer.

"Pinky Dinkys are chaps who've had their buds nipped," said Hatherleigh.
"They're Plebs and they know it. They haven't the Guts to get hold of
things. And so they worry up all those silly little jokes of theirs to
carry it off."...

We tried bad ones for a time, viciously flavoured.

Pinky Dinkys are due to over-production of the type that ought to keep
outfitters' shops. Pinky Dinkys would like to keep outfitters' shops
with whimsy