baddish way before he came, I own; but this new
crotchet of his is past a joke."

"Let's give it a trial, Harry; come. You know how often he has been
right and we wrong."

"Now, don't you two be jawing away about young Square-toes," struck in
Gower. "He's no end of a sucking wiseacre, I dare say; but we've no time
to lose, and I've got the fives court at half-past nine."

"I say, Gower," said Tom appealingly, "be a good fellow, and let's try
if we can't get on without the crib."

"What! in this chorus? Why, we shan't get through ten lines."

"I say, Tom," cried East, having hit on a new idea, "don't you remember,
when we were in the upper fourth, and old Momus caught me construing
off the leaf of a crib which I'd torn out and put in my book, and which
would float out on to the floor, he sent me up to be flogged for it?"

"Yes, I remember it very well."

"Well, the Doctor, after he'd flogged me, told me himself that he didn't
flog me for using a translation, but for taking it in to lesson, and
using it there when I hadn't learnt a word before I came in. He said
there was no harm in using a translation to get a clue to hard passages,
if you tried all you could first to make them out without."

"Did he, though?" said Tom; "then Arthur must be wrong."

"Of course he is," said Gower--"the little prig. We'll only use the crib
when we can't construe without it.--Go ahead, East."

And on this agreement they started--Tom, satisfied with having made his
confession, and not sorry to have a locus penitentiae, and not to be
deprived altogether of the use of his old and faithful friend.

The boys went on as usual, each taking a sentence in turn, and the crib
being handed to the one whose turn it was to construe. Of course
Tom couldn't object to this, as, was it not simply lying there to be
appealed to in case the sentence should prove too hard altogether for
the construer? But it must be owned that Gower and East did not make
very tremendous exertions to conquer their sentences before having
recourse to its help. Tom, however, with the most heroic virtue and
gallantry, rushed into his sentence, searching in a high-minded manner
for nominative and verb, and turning over his dictionary frantically for
the first hard word that stopped him. But in the meantime Gower, who
was bent on getting to fives, would peep quietly into the crib, and then
suggest, "Don't you think this is the meaning?" "I think you must take
it this way,