house with an
exaggerated attitude of fear. Did they purpose to cause him to be
dismissed from the College by unanimous resolution? What were their
views concerning the government of the school, that he might hasten
to give effect to them? he would not offend them for worlds; but
he feared--he sadly feared--that his own house, who did not pass
resolutions (but washed), might somewhat deride.

King was a happy man, and his house, basking in the favor of his smile,
made that afternoon a long penance to the misled Prouts. And Prout
himself, with a dull and lowering visage, tried to think out the rights
and wrongs of it all, only plunging deeper into bewilderment. Why should
his house be called "Stinkers"? Truly, it was a small thing, but he had
been trained to believe that straws show which way the wind blows, and
that there is no smoke without fire. He approached King in Common-room
with a sense of injustice, but King was pleased to be full of airy
persiflage that tide, and brilliantly danced dialectical rings round
Prout.

"Now," said Stalky at bedtime, making pilgrimage through the dormitories
before the prefects came by, "_now_ what have you got to say for
yourselves? Foster, Carton, Finch, Longbridge, Marlin, Brett! I heard
you chaps catchin' it from King--he made hay of you--an' all you could
do was to wriggle an' grin an' say, 'Yes, sir,' an' 'No, sir,'' an' 'O,
sir,' an' 'Please, sir'! You an' your resolution! Urh!"

"Oh, shut up, Stalky."

"Not a bit of it. You're a gaudy lot of resolutionists, you are! You've
made a sweet mess of it. Perhaps you'll have the decency to leave us
alone next time."

Here the house grew angry, and in many voices pointed out how this
blunder would never have come to pass if Number Five study had helped
them from the first.

"But you chaps are so beastly conceited, an'--an' you swaggered into the
meetin' as if we were a lot of idiots," growled Orrin of the resolution.

"That's precisely what you are! That's what we've been tryin' to hammer
into your thick heads all this time," said Stalky. "Never mind, we'll
forgive you. Cheer up. You can't help bein' asses, you know," and, the
enemy's flank deftly turned, Stalky hopped into bed.

That night was the first of sorrow among the jubilant King's. By some
accident of under-floor drafts the cat did not vex the dormitory beneath
which she lay, but the next one to the right; stealing on the air rather
as a pale-blue sensation than as