“I will be happy to present you with my tickets, and you can start to-morrow,” said Waters, with a shade of acidity. He felt that this personal inconvenience, owing to the abandonment of his plans, was likely to remain the bitterest fruit of the European crisis.
“Well, I may be wrong about it,” said Jackson, “but I don’t think that all this agitation is likely to lead to much. I expect to give my lectures pretty much as usual in the October term. Someone was saying to-day that war was practically certain, and that there would be a huge call for young men to join the army. In my opinion, both propositions are highly unlikely. As for undergraduates interrupting their residence here, in order to join up, such a supposition is totally out of the question.”
Alison had already finished his glass of Alison’s Own, which, as usual, encouraged him to independence of thought. He was employed on a game of Patience, since Whist was not considered a Sabbatical diversion in these decorous circles. But there was nothing inharmonious between Patience and Sunday.
“I should not be too sure of that,” he said. “A European war might prove subversive of even such well-established phenomena as lectures on Thucydides.”
“And I am disposed to add as a scholium to your text the simple word ‘fiddlesticks,’” said Jackson with some severity.
“You are at liberty to add any scholia you choose,” said Alison, putting a black king on a red queen.
There was a certain acrimonious flavour about this, and Waters intervened.
“Scholia or no scholia,” he said, “I don’t suppose anyone imagines that the war will not be over by Christmas.”
“With a rider to the effect that the war will not have begun by Christmas,” said Jackson. “If anyone cares to know my opinion as to the date of the outbreak of war between England and Germany, I unhesitatingly name the Greek Calends.”
“So now we know,” said Alison rebelliously. There was a hitch in his Patience, and that, combined with the hitch in European harmony, rendered him a little irritable.