“Oh, I’m so glad you’re not working,” said Billy, sweetly, all the note-books—there were six of them—fell to the floor when he sat down; “because we couldn’t have disturbed you, and I don’t know what we’d have done—Dilford’s told you?”
“Yes, Dilford has told me,” answered Haydock. He knew that then was the time to escort these young gentlemen to the hall, and lock the door in their faces. But he allowed it to slip by, and it never returned.
“Well, then—I don’t see why we shouldn’t dash right along. What do you think?” Billy looked from Haydock to Dilford and back again.
“What is it you want—and what are all those books doing?” Haydock asked wearily.
“Oh, these?” Billy allowed his feet to ramble among the volumes on the floor. “Oh, they’re just notes—History and French and things; there were no matches in my room, and I was in a hurry, so I had to bring them all. The Literature ones are there too; but they’re rather—rather—what shall I say?” He refrained delicately from saying what was the simple truth,—that his notes on all subjects were an illegible muddle, beginning nowhere—arriving nowhere. “Things come to me at such odd times,” he went on, “I just jot them down. Anyhow you won’t need notes; we merely want you to give us some idea to go by,” he fluttered his slender hand comprehensively, “an idea of literature.”
“Yes,” put in Dilly, stirred by the practical common sense of the suggestion, “the examination, I think, is about literature.”
“You think—good God, child, don’t you know?” Haydock mopped his forehead on the back of his arm, and stared at the two incredulously.
“Oh, he’ll catch on all right,” said Billy, easily. “You see the course only came once a week, and Darnell lectures so fast that, sitting away in the back of the room as we do—”
“You prefer, on the whole, to stay away entirely, or make the hour pass as rapidly as possible. Yes, yes, I understand,” interrupted Haydock, drily. He picked up one of Billy’s books marked “English 28,” and opened it at random, to a page devoted to the diagrams and scores of the “Harvard University Tit Tat Too and Cent Matching Association. Originators and Sole Proprietors, William Prescott Ware and Dilford Bancroft. Honorary member: President Eliot.” On the page following was a fragmentary list of the writers whose lives and achievements had been taken up in the course. After the name of Jane Austen, came the announcement, in parentheses, that “this woman was a man.” The startling bit of literary gossip was annotated by: “I was mistaken—it was George Eliot who was a woman.”
“That almost flunked me at the hour exam,” explained Billy, diffidently. “They’re so fussy about things here.” He was looking over Haydock’s shoulder. “It would have, I think, if I hadn’t thrown a new light on the temperament of Swift.”