e Avery came hurrying in to dinner.
"Oh, sconce him!" shouted everybody. "It's nearly five-and-twenty past."
"Couldn't help it," said Maurice very importantly. "Just been seeing the
first number of the O.L.G. through the press."
"By gad," said Lonsdale. "It's a way we have in the Buffs and the Forty
Two'th. Look here, have we all got to buy this rotten paper of yours?
What's it going to cost?"
"A shilling," said Maurice modestly.
"A bob!" cried Lonsdale. "But, my dear old ink-slinger, I can buy the
five-o'clock Star for a half-penny."
Maurice had to put up with a good deal of chaff from everybody that
night.
"Let's have the program," Sinclair suggested.
The editor was so much elated at the prospect of to-morrow's great event
that he rashly produced from his pocket the contents bill, which
Lonsdale seized and immediately began to read out:
"THE OXFORD LOOKING-GLASS.
No. I.
_"Some Reflections. By Maurice Avery._
"What are you reflecting on, Mossy?"
"Oh, politics," said Maurice lightly, "and other things."
"My god, he'll be Prime Minister next week," said Cuffe.
_"Socrates at Balliol. By Guy Hazlewood._
"And just about where he ought to have been," commented Lonsdale. "Oh,
listen to this! Whoo-oop!
_"The Failure of the Modern Illustrator._
"But wait a minute, who do you think it's by? C. St. C. Wedderburn!
Jolly old Wedders! The Failure of the Modern Illustrator. Wedders! My
god, I shall cat with laughing. Wedders! A bee-luddy author."
"Sconce Mr. Lonsdale, please," said Wedderburn, turning gravely to the
recorder by his chair.
"What, half a crown for not really saying bloody?" Lonsdale protested.
That night after hall there was much to tell Venner of the successful
bombardment with potatoes, and there was some chaff for Avery and
Wedderburn in regard to their forthcoming magazine. Parties of
out-of-college men came in after their dinner, and at half-past eight
o'clock the little office was fuller than usual, with the college gossip
being carried on in a helter-skelter of unceasing babble. Just when
Fitzroy the Varsity bow was enunciating the glories of Wet Bobbery and
the comparative obscurities of Dry Bobbery and just when all the Dry
Bobs present were bowling the contrary arguments at him from every
corner at once, the door opened and a freshman, as fair and floridly
handsome as a young Bacchus, walked with curious tiptoe steps into the
very heart of the as
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