They had come back on to the tracks they had made in the dew on their way down to the bridge, and Jim pointed at them.
“It’s like that,” he said. “We’ve walked right away off the grass and yet we come back to where we were when we went out. It’ll always be like that; there’ll always be the old tracks waiting for us. When you’re seventy-nine and I’m eighty and we’re both deaf and blind and rheumatic, there’ll be the tracks there just the same. ’Fraid I’ve been jawing.”
“Well, what’s the harm?” said Birds.
“Bad habit to get into.”
They rambled back without further speech into Jim’s room, where Birds discarded his friend’s blazer and collected his own torn shirt.
“I shall have a good eye to-morrow,” he said, “because I’ve sat up so late, and smoked so much. The way to be thoroughly off colour is to go to bed early and have a long night. That makes you drowsy all next day.”
He nodded at Jim by way of good-night and went across the passage to his room just opposite.
With Birds playing for Cambridge, it was obvious that Jim would have to spend the whole of the next two days in the pavilion at the University ground, and deny himself the pleasure of attending any lectures which might have been provided for him by the College authorities. It was therefore a little unfortunate that he met his tutor proceeding in cap and gown to the lecture-room next morning, exactly at the moment when he himself came out into the court with a straw-hat and a pleasant holiday aspect.
Mr. Butler had the appearance of a butler, which was a very happy coincidence, an air of impenetrable respectability and mutton-chop whiskers. He prided himself on the possession of a sarcastic tongue, the effect of which on his victims he believed to be as withering as a sirocco wind. For the present, however, he contented himself with an awful glance at Jim, for his sarcasm had to be carefully prepared. But since Birds had just telephoned down from the cricket ground that the University had won the toss and that he himself was going in third wicket, it was no use to dream of attending Mr. Butler’s discourse on Cicero’s essay on friendship, for the real thing called him.
The University had made a disastrous start when he arrived at the ground, and had lost two wickets for eleven runs. Jim made his way to the pavilion and there found Birds in a very clammy condition of nerves.