he Captain in a body the next day, after Miller's
departure; and then being summoned to the boat, they took to the
water again, and paddled steadily up home, arriving just in time
for hall for those who liked to hurry. Drysdale never liked
hurrying himself; besides, he could not dine in hall, as he was
discommonsed for persistent absence from lecture, and neglect to
go to the Dean when sent for to explain his absence.

"I say, Brown, hang hall," he said to Tom, who was throwing on
his things; "come and dine with me at the Mitre. I'll give you a
bottle of hock; it's very good there."

"Hock's about the worst thing you drink in training," said
Miller. "Isn't it, Jervis?"

"It's no good, certainly," said the Captain, as he put on his cap
and gown; "come along, Miller."

"There, you hear?" said Miller. "You can drink a glass of sound
sherry, if you want wine;" and he followed the Captain.

Drysdale performed a defiant pantomime after the retiring
coxswain, and then easily carried his point with Tom, except as
to the hock. So they walked up to the Mitre together, where
Drysdale ordered dinner and a bottle of hock in the coffee-room.

"Don't order hock, Drysdale; I shan't drink any."

"Then I shall have it all to my own cheek. If you begin making a
slave of yourself to that Miller, he'll very soon cut you down to
a glass of water a day, with a pinch of rhubarb in it, and make
you drink that standing on your head."

"Gammon; but I don't think it's fair on the rest of the crew not
to train as well as one can."

"You don't suppose drinking a pint of hock to-night will make you
pull any the worse this day six weeks, when the races begin, do
you?"

"No; but--"

"Hullo! look here," said Drysdale, who was inspecting a printed
bill pinned up on the wall of the coffee hall; "Wombwell's
menagerie is in the town, somewhere down by Worcester. What fun!
We'll go there after dinner."

The food arrived with Drysdale's hock, which he seemed to enjoy
all the more from the assurance which every glass gave him that
he was defying the coxswain, and doing just the thing he would
most dislike. So he drank away, and facetiously speculated how he
could be such an idiot as to go on pulling. Every day of his life
he made good resolutions in the reach above the Gut that it
should be his last performance, and always broke them next day.
He supposed the habit he had of breaking all good resolutions was
the way to account for it.

Afte