th slow
strokes.

Billy had his clothes off in a moment, and, taking the plunge, screamed
loudly "You liar!" he yelled, as he came up. And he made for Bertie.

Delight rendered Bertie weak and helpless; he was caught and ducked; and
after some vigorous wrestling both came out of the icy water.

"Now we've got no towels, you fool," said Billy.

"Use your notes," said Bertie, and he rolled in the grass. Then they
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
it, "Called, three P.M.," and signed it as before, and departed to his
room with a sense of fulfilled obligations.

Bertie and Billy had lunched at Mattapan quite happily on cold ham, cold
pie, and doughnuts. Matta