“After all, we seem to annoy you without taking any trouble about it,” remarked Badsley, “and you have to take a great deal of trouble to annoy anybody. You’ve got to grow your hair long, and copy out Victor Hugo, and run a paper that nobody reads.”
“But I can’t help it: I must make a protest against respectability. Respectability carried to such a pitch as St. Stephen’s carries it to is simply indecent. Nobody ever gets drunk except me, and I not frequently because I hate feeling unwell afterwards. It’s so degrading to be sick even in a good cause. Why don’t we keep mistresses? Why does nobody do anything that he shouldn’t according to collegiate standards? Atheism too: Why no atheists? And all the time I’ve got a horrible feeling that I’m really just the same as any of you.”
“You need not, I assure you,” said Birds in the Butler voice, “be under any mistaken misapprehensions about that.”
“But I am. I argue and protest, but at bottom——”
“Oh, kick it, somebody,” said Badsley.
Jim went and stood in front of the fireplace with his head on one side.
“The question is how we shall make Jelf more like us,” he said. “Shall we begin by cutting his hair or shaving him, or——”
There was a wild rush across the room and Jelf jumped out of the window on to the grass outside.
“Cowards!” he said, and ran to his room and locked himself in.
Birds, who had just failed to catch Jelf before he jumped out of the window, came back into the room.