s house stinks.
That's all."

"Stale!" Stalky shouted. "We knew that years ago, only we didn't
choose to run about shoutin' 'stinker.' We've got some manners, ir they
haven't. Catch a fag, Turkey, and make sure of it."

Turkey's long arm closed on a hurried and anxious ornament of the Lower
Second.

"Oh, McTurk, please let me go. I don't stink--I swear I don't!"

"Guilty conscience!" cried Beetle. "Who said you did?"

"What d'you make of it?" Stalky punted the small boy into Beetle's arms.

"Snf! Snf! He does, though. I think it's leprosy--or thrush. P'raps it's
both. Take it away."

"Indeed, Master Beetle"--King generally came to the house-door for a
minute or two as the bell rang--"we are vastly indebted to you for your
diagnosis, which seems to reflect almost as much credit on the natural
unwholesomeness of your mind as it does upon your pitiful ignorance of
the diseases of which you discourse so glibly. We will, however, test
your knowledge in other directions."

That was a merry lesson, but, in his haste to scarify Beetle, King
clean neglected to give him an imposition, and since at the same time
he supplied him with many priceless adjectives for later use, Beetle was
well content, and applied himself most seriously throughout third
lesson (algebra with little Hartopp) to composing a poem entitled "The
Lazar-house."

After dinner King took his house to bathe in the sea off the
Pebbleridge. It was an old promise; but he wished he could have evaded
it, for all Prout's lined up by the Fives Court and cheered with
intention. In his absence not less than half the school invaded the
infected dormitory to draw their own conclusions. The cat had gained in
the last twelve hours, but a battlefield of the fifth day could not have
been so flamboyant as the spies reported.

"My word, she _is_ doin' herself proud," said Stalky. "Did you ever
smell anything like it? Ah, an' she isn't under White's dormitory at all
yet."

"But she will be. Give her time," said Beetle. "She'll twine like
a giddy honeysuckle. What howlin' Lazarites they are! No house is
justified in makin' itself a stench in the nostrils of decent--"

"High-minded, pure-souled boys. Do you burn with remorse and regret?"
said McTurk, as they hastened to meet the house coming up from the sea.
King had deserted it, so speech was unfettered. Round its front played
a crowd of skirmishers--all houses mixed--flying, reforming, shrieking
insults. On its tort