p for your degree? I have a notion this next term is
your fifteenth, young man?"

"Why no, sir--that is, not exactly; you know"----

"Oh! true--I forgot that confounded rustication business. Well, it's
your fourteenth at all events, and I think that's enough."

"Well, sir, I was thinking to have a shy at it after Christmas."

"Shy at it! You've always been _shying_ at it, I think. I hope it mayn't
end in a _bolt_, Master Frank!"

I laughed dutifully at the paternal wit, and promised to go to work in
earnest the moment I reached Oxford.

This was a resolution announced periodically like the ballot question,
and with much the same result. So the governor only shook his head,
yawned, looked at the bottle, which stood between us nearly empty, and
prepared apparently for an adjournment.

"I'll tell you what, sir," said I, emptying what remained in the
decanter into my glass, and swallowing it with a desperate energy
befitting the occasion, "I'll stay up the Christmas vacation and read."

"The deuce will you! Why, Frank," continued the governor, sorely
puzzled, "you know your cousins are coming here to spend the Christmas,
and I thought we should all make a merry party. Why can't you read a
little at home? You can get up something earlier, you know--much better
for your health--and have two hours or so clear before breakfast--no
time like the morning for reading--and then have all the day to yourself
afterwards. Eh, why not, Frank?"

"If you'll allow me to ring for another bottle of this Madeira, sir, (I
declare I think it's better than our senior common-room have, and they
don't consider theirs small-beer,) I'll tell you.----I never could read
at home, sir; it's not in the nature of things."

"I doubt whether it's much in your nature to read any where, Frank: I
confess I don't see much signs of it when you are here."

"In the first place, sir, I should never have a room to myself."

"Why, there's the library for you all day long, Frank; I'm sure I don't
trouble it much."

"Why, sir, in these days, if there are any young ladies in the house,
they take to the library as a matter of course: it's the regular place
for love-making: mammas don't follow them into the company of folios and
quartos while there are three volumes of the last novel on the
drawing-room table; and the atmosphere is sentimentality itself; they
mark favourite passages, and sigh illustrations."

"Precious dusty work, Frank, flirtations among