ows were ground glass; one could not see out of it, but
one could hear almost every word on the gravel outside. A light and wary
footstep came up from Number Five.

"Rattray!" in a subdued voice--Rattray's study fronted that way. "D'you
know if Mr. King's anywhere about? I've got a--" McTurk discreetly left
the end of the sentence open.

"No, he's gone out," said Rattray unguardedly.

"Ah! The learned Lipsius is airing himself, is he? His Royal Highness
has gone to fumigate." McTurk climbed on the railings, where he held
forth like the never-wearied rook.

"Now in all the Coll. there was no stink like the stink of King's house,
for it stank vehemently and none knew what to make of it. Save King. And
he washed the fags _privatim et seriatim_. In the fishpools of Hesbon
washed he them, with an apron about his loins."

"Shut up, you mad Irishman!" There was the sound of a golf-ball spurting
up gravel.

"It's no good getting wrathy, Rattray. We've come to jape with you. Come
on, Beetle. They're all at home. You can wind 'em."

"Where's the Pomposo Stinkadore? 'Tisn't safe for a pure-souled,
high-minded boy to be seen round his house these days. Gone out, has he?
Never mind. I'll do the best I can, Rattray. I'm _in loco parentis_ just
now."

("One for you, Prout," whispered Macrea, for this was Mr. Prout's pet
phrase.)

"I have a few words to impart to you, my young friend. We will discourse
together a while."

Here the listening Prout sputtered: Beetle, in a strained voice, had
chosen a favorite gambit of King's.

"I repeat, Master Rattray, we will confer, and the matter of our
discourse shall not be stinks, for that is a loathsome and obscene
word. We will, with your good leave--granted, I trust, Master Rattray,
granted, I trust--study this--this scabrous upheaval of latent
demoralization. What impresses me most is not so much the blatant
indecency with which you swagger abroad under your load of putrescence"
(you must imagine this discourse punctuated with golf-balls, but old
Rattray was ever a bad shot) "as the cynical immorality with which you
revel in your abhorrent aromas. Far be it from me to interfere with
another's house--"

("Good Lord!" said Prout, "but this is King."

"Line for line, letter for letter; listen;" said little Hartopp.)

"But to say that you stink, as certain lewd fellows of the baser sort
aver, is to say nothing--less than nothing. In the absence of your
beloved house-master, for