--welters--for--for--takin' unheard-of
liberties with a new master. I saw his shoulders shaking when we went
out. Do you know," said Beetle, pensively, "that Mason can't look at us
now in second lesson without blushing? We three stare at him sometimes
till he regularly trickles. He's an awfully sensitive beast."

"He read 'Eric, or Little by Little,'" said McTurk; "so we gave him 'St.
Winifred's, or the World of School.' They spent all their spare time
stealing at St. Winifred's, when they weren't praying or getting drunk
at pubs. Well, that was only a week ago, and the Head's a little bit shy
of us. He called it constructive deviltry. Stalky invented it all."

"Not the least good having a row with a master unless you can make an
ass of him," said Stalky, extended at ease on the hearth-rug. "If Mason
didn't know Number Five--well, he's learnt, that's all. Now, my dearly
beloved 'earers"--Stalky curled his legs under him and addressed the
company--"we've got that strong', perseverin' man King on our hands. He
went miles out of his way to provoke a conflict." (Here Stalky snapped
down the black silk domino and assumed the air of a judge.) "He has
oppressed Beetle, McTurk, and me, _privatim et seriatim_, one by one,
as he could catch us. But now, he has insulted Number Five up in
the music-room, and in the presence of these--these ossifers of the
Ninety-third, wot look like hairdressers. Binjimin, we must make him cry
'Capivi!'"

Stalky's reading did not include Browning or Ruskin.

"And, besides," said McTurk, "he's a Philistine, a basket-hanger. He
wears a tartan tie. Ruskin says that any man who wears a tartan tie
will, without doubt, be damned everlastingly."

"Bravo, McTurk," said Tertius; "I thought he was only a beast."

"He's that, too, of course, but he's worse. He has a china basket with
blue ribbons and a pink kitten on it, hung up in his window to grow musk
in. You know when I got all that old oak carvin' out of Bideford Church,
when they were restoring it (Ruskin says that any man who'll restore a
church is an unmitigated sweep), and stuck it up here with glue? Well,
King came in and wanted to know whether we'd done it with a fret-saw!
Yah! He is the King of basket-hangers!"

Down went McTurk's inky thumb over an imaginary arena full of bleeding
Kings. "_Placete_, child of a generous race!" he cried to Beetle.

"Well," began Beetle, doubtfully, "he comes from Balliol, but I'm going
to give the beast a