CHAPTER V. DEGREE.

 The Schools were now very near ahead of him, and, though not much behindhand with his work, considering the intensity of his exertions in other directions, he was anxious to make the most of the months that were left. He read very hard in vacation, but, when term began again, had to encounter unusual difficulties. His father’s half-hinted warnings against a large acquaintance proved prophetic. In fact, I used to wonder how he ever got his reading done at all, and was often not a little annoyed with many of my own contemporaries, and other younger men still, even to the last batch of freshmen, whose fondness for his society was untempered by any thought of examinations, or honours. Not one of them could give a wine, or a breakfast party, without him, and his good-nature kept him from refusing when he found that his presence gave real pleasure. Then he never had the heart to turn them out of his rooms, or keep his oak habitually sported; and when that most necessary ceremony[81] for a reading man had been performed, it was not respected as it should have been. My rooms were on the same staircase, half a flight below his (which looked into the quadrangle, while mine looked out over the back of the College), so that I could hear all that happened. Our College lectures were all over at one. It was well for him if he had secured quiet up to that hour; but, in any case, regularly within a few minutes after the clock had struck, I used to hear steps on the stairs, and a pause before his oak. If it was sported, kicking or knocking would follow, with imploring appeals, “Now, old ’un” (the term of endearment by which he went in College), “do open—I know you’re in—only for two minutes.” A short persistence seldom failed; and soon other men followed on the same errand, “for a few minutes only,” till it was time for lunch, to which he would then be dragged off in one of their rooms, and his oak never get sported again till late at night. Up to his last term in College this went on, though not to quite the same extent; and even then there was one incorrigible young idler, who never failed in his “open sesame,” and wasted more of my brother’s time than all the rest of the College. But who could be angry with him? He was one of the smallest and most delicate men I ever saw, weighing about 8st. l0lb., a capital rider, and as brave as a lion, though we always called him “the Mouse.” Full of mother wit, but utterly uncultivated,[82] it was a perfect marvel how he ever matriculated, and his answers, and attempts at construing, in lecture were fabulous—full of good impulse, but fickle as the wind; reckless, spendthrift, fast, in constant trouble with tradesmen, proctors, and the College authorities. But no tradesman, when it came to the point, had the heart to “court,” or proctor to rusticate him; and the Dean, though constantly in wrath at his misdeeds, never got beyond warnings, and “gating.” So he held on, until his utter, repeated, and hopeless failure to pass his “smalls,” brought his college career to its inevitable end. Unfortunately for my brother’s reading, that career coincided with his third year, and his society had an extraordinary fascination for the Mouse. The perfect contrast between them, in mind and body, may probably account for this; but I think the little man had also a sort of longing to be decent and respectable, and, in the midst of his wildest scrapes, felt that his intimacy with the best oar and cricketer in the College, who was also on good terms with the Dons, and paid his bills, and could write Greek verses, kept him in touch with the better life of the place, and was a constant witness to himself of his intention to amend, some day. They had one taste in common, however, which largely accounted for my brother’s undoubted affection for the little “ne’er do weel,” a passion for animals. The Mouse kept two terriers, who were to him as children, lying in his bosom by night, and eating from his plate by day.[83] Dogs were strictly forbidden in College, and the vigilance of the porter was proof against all the other pets. But the Mouse’s terriers defied it. From living on such intimate terms with their master, they had become as sharp as undergraduates. They were never seen about the quadrangles in the day-time, and knew the sound and sight of dean, tutor, and porter, better than any freshman. When the Mouse went out of College, they would stay behind on the staircase till they were sure he must be fairly out in the street, and then scamper across the two quadrangles, and out of the gate, as if their lives depended on the pace. In the same way, on returning, they would repeat the process, after first looking cautiously in at the gate to see that the porter was safe in his den. But after dusk they were at their ease at once, and would fearlessly trot over the forbidden grass of the inner quad, or sit at the Provost’s door, or on the Hall steps, and romp with anybody not in a master’s gown. So, even when his master’s knock remained unanswered, Crib’s or Jet’s beseeching whine and scratch would always bring my brother to the door. He could not resist dogs, or children.