quest for drink and cards.

"He'll never do for the boat, I'm afraid," said the Captain;
"with his rascally late hours, and drinking and eating all sorts
of trash. It's a pity, too for he's a pretty oar for his weight."

"He is such uncommon good company, too," said Tom.

"Yes; but I'll tell you what. He's just a leetle too good company
for you and me, or any fellows who mean to take a degree. Let's
see, this is only his third term? I'll give him, perhaps, two
more to make the place too hot to hold him. Take my word for it,
he'll never get to his little-go."

"It will be a great pity, then," said Tom.

"So it will. But after all, you see, what does it matter to him?
He gets rusticated; takes his name off with a flourish of
trumpets--what then? He falls back on 5,000L a year in land, and
a good accumulation in consols, runs abroad or lives in town for
a year. Takes the hounds when he comes of age, or is singled out
by some discerning constituency, and sent to make laws for his
country, having spent the whole of his life hitherto in breaking
all the laws he ever came under. You and I, perhaps, go fooling
about with him, and get rusticated. We make our friends
miserable. We can't take our names off, but have to come cringing
back at the end of our year, marked men. Keep our tails between
our legs for the rest of the time. Lose a year at our
professions, and most likely have the slip casting up against us
in one way or another for the next twenty years. It's like the
old story of the giant and the dwarf, or like fighting a sweep,
or any other one-sided business."

"But I'd sooner have to fight my own way in the world after all;
wouldn't you?" said Tom.

"H-m-m!" said the Captain, throwing himself back in the chair,
and smiling; "can't answer off hand. I'm a third year man, and
begin to see the other side rather clearer than I did when I was
a freshman like you. Three years at Oxford, my boy, will teach
you something of what rank and money count for, if they teach you
nothing else."

"Why, here's the Captain singing the same song as Hardy," thought
Tom.

"So you two have to go to the proctor to-morrow?"

"Yes."

"Shall you go? Drysdale won't."

"Of course I shall. It seems to me childish not to go; as if I
were back in the lower school again. To tell you the truth, the
being sent for isn't pleasant; but the other I couldn't stand."

"Well, I don't feel anything of that sort. But I think you're
right on th