“He didn’t.”
“Quite right, he didn’t. But I am delirious to-night, and attribute it to spending the afternoon on the Cam. Lord, it was jolly up there! Beechen green and shadows numberless, you know, and lots of peewits. And Jim sang of summer in full-throated ease. My throat was full, too, because we had tea.”
Jim had lain down on the floor, with his back propped up against Birds’ knees, who in turn was propped up by the sofa where Badders sat.
“Hail to thee, blithe peewit, Birds thou never wert,” he remarked fatuously.
“Never,” said Birds, suddenly opening his knees, so that Jim fell flat on the ground. He made no effort whatever to move, and continued lying there, while Birds got up and put a college cap on his head, and invested himself in a scholar’s gown, which, against his bare skin, looked somehow strangely indecent. He put his head on one side, in the manner of Jackson lecturing, and pulled the place where his moustache would have been, had he had one.
“I can’t think what Sphodrias was about,” he began, “and if you’ll turn to the third chapter of the fourth book you’ll see how perfectly inexplicable it was that he should have been kicking his heels at Sphacteria——”
He broke off.
“Lor! A very poor sort of fellow is Jackers,” he said.
“And if it hadn’t been for Jackers there’d have been no Julia,” remarked Jim, as he lay gazing at the ceiling from his prone position on the hearth-rug.
Julia’s victim considered this. He had found a small piece of duck left from the meal that he and Jim had made earlier in the evening, and decided it was worth eating.