ficent, but Jack
would not hear a word against his way of spending the vac.

"He may not know much history," he said to me when we got back to
Oxford, "but he's a rare good sort, and he says I'm a natural oar.
Besides, he's a sportsman."

"What's that?" I asked, for I used the word "sportsman" to mean so many
things.

"He doesn't bother people; you can play cards if you like, and he has a
billiard table. He is a nailer at cork pool."

"Is he?" I said, and asked no more about him, for I have a horror of
nailers at any sort of pool, having once been hopelessly fleeced by
some of them.

"I won a pot," Jack went on gaily, "in the scratch fours at Wallhead
regatta--I rowed in two regattas. Not so bad; and now I've got to go
down to the river every day and be coached by men who don't know the
difference between an oar and a barge pole. Well, it's all part of the
game."

"What's the game?" I asked.

"Look here, Godfrey, something's happened to you. You've gone stupid;
it's _your_ game. To buck St. Cuthbert's up, get rid of these
confounded slackers, squash them flat, and we are going to do it, you
see if we don't. Dennison was drunk last night or pretended to be, and
he and his gang invaded a lot of freshers and then asked them all to
breakfast. That crowd are no more use to a college than a headache.
Fancy coming to Oxford to be ragged by Dennison!"

"It does seem rather futile."

"Futile!" Jack exclaimed scornfully, and then proceeded to say what he
called it; "but if you have given up caring what happens I shall chuck
up the whole thing," he concluded.

"I have not given up caring, but I have tried once and got laughed at
for my trouble. I don't believe you can squash men like Dennison when
they once get into a college; they are like black beetles, and you
can't get rid of them unless you kill them."

"We can try," Jack said.

"I tried, and most men thought me a fool. The only thing to do is to
leave them alone; but the worst of it is that we can't help meeting
Dennison at dinners and things. He smiled on me the other day as if I
was his best friend."

"He didn't smile at me."

"I think he hates you; I can't get properly hated, when I try to show
Dennison I loathe him he smiles. There's something wrong with me
somewhere."

"You are too rottenly good-natured."

"I never thought of that," I said.

"That's it," Jack declared; "I saw Lambert hitting you on the back in
the quad this morning."