ed forth with an invitation in his pocket to anyone who
would help his friend out with a few lines, he had dropped them about in
a good many other quarters. He had secured the attendance of Simson and
Maple of the Shell, and of Bateson and Jukes of the Babies, and, with a
view to ingratiate himself with some of his neighbours on the first
floor, he had bidden to the banquet Wake, Ranger, Wignet, and Sherriff
of the Fifth, and actually prevailed upon Stafford to lend the dignity
of a Sixth-form patronage to the _reunion_.

These heroes were naturally a little disgusted on turning up at the
rendezvous to find the room crowded, with scarcely standing space to
space, by a troop of hungry and noisy juniors. The good hosts perspired
with the heat of the room, and, as guest after guest crowded in, began
to look a little anxious at the modest fare on the table, and speculate
mentally on how far one loaf, one pot of jam, four pats of butter, a
pint coffee-pot, and three-and-a-half tea-cups would go round the lot.
At length, when Stafford arrived, and could not get in at the door for
the crush, despair seized them.

"You kids had better hook it," said Arthur, to half a dozen of the
juniors, who had squeezed themselves into a front rank near the table.
"There's not room to-day. Come to-morrow."

Loud were the complaints, not unmingled with threatenings and gibes, of
these disappointed Babies.

"What a horrible shame!" exclaimed Jukes, in a very audible voice. "We
were here first."

"Do you hear?--cut!" repeated the host.

"Come, along," said Bateson; "what's the use of bothering about a crumb
and a half a-piece? I never saw such a skinny spread in all my days."

And in the ten years which comprehended Master Bateson's "days" he had
had a little experience of that sort of thing.

The company being now reduced to eight, to wit, Stafford, the four
Fifth-form boys, the two hosts, and Dimsdale, assumed more manageable
proportions. There was room at least to move an arm or a leg, and even
to shut the door. But when it came to taking seats, it still became
evident that the table could by no possibility hold more than six.
Another crisis thereupon arose. Dimsdale was regretfully dismissed, and
departed scarlet in the face, promising, as he slammed the door, to show
"up" his hosts. These amiable worthies, much distressed, and not a whit
cooler that the room was now comparatively empty, smiled feebly at this
threat, and ar