"They are not enough," he said, and he blew on his horn until I should think fifty or sixty people were standing in the street. Then he put his head out of the window and shouted, "Silence. I will, if you will permit me, say a few words to you on burning questions of the day." The crowd was almost entirely made up of loafers from the town, and they received him with loud cries of approval.
"Fellow-citizens of Oxford," he began, and was told at once to speak up, and asked if his mother knew he was out and other ancient questions, which interrupted but did not discourage him.
"Fellow-citizens of Oxford," he repeated, "who have assembled in your thousands——" His next words were drowned by a rude man, with a blatant voice, telling him that he was a blooming liar.
"Fellow-citizens and burgesses of Oxford, who have assembled in your thousands to hear—" Bunny began once more, but the rude man shouted that he was not at a concert, and when he wanted to listen to the same thing over and over again he was not too shy to say so.
"I shall have to ask you to remove that gentleman, he is mistaking me for one of his unfortunate family," Bunny shouted back, and was told to go on and not mind Tom Briggs. It was not possible, however, for him to make himself heard, and instead of continuing his speech he and Tom Briggs talked to each other, until some one behind me threw a banana at Tom and knocked his hat off. At the same moment I saw the proctor and his bull-dogs coming down the street, and in a minute we had turned out all the lights in the room and gone up-stairs. There we stayed until we heard the proctor leave the house.
"That's a bit of luck," said Jack, as we sat down again.
"I can't make out what the deuce has happened," Bunny answered, "he must have spotted the house."
"Perhaps he didn't want to catch us; after all we were not doing much," some man, whose experience of proctors must have been limited, said.
We got back to the room and heard a tremendous booing in the street, for the crowd, deprived of their fun, were letting the proctor know what they thought of him.
"That's splendid," Bunny said, "it's a real score if he doesn't send for us in the morning. If he does he will be sick to death with me, I've been progged three times already this term. Pull the curtains and let's light up again."