“Weather, chiefly. He says it would be grovelling flattery to call it beastly.”
“Reggie is given to making truisms,” said the Babe turning over the page. “Jack, I wish you’d go away. I want to work. Besides, you’re so devilish cheerful, and I’m not.”
“Sorry to hear it. Oh, yes, and Reggie told me to remind you that you are playing tennis with him at twelve. He’s got the New Court.”
The Babe brightened up: there was an hour less of morning.
“Hurrah! that will suit me excellently. Many thanks, and please go away. Good-bye.”
Stewart confessed that the Babe had surprised him. Most people who knew the Babe were never surprised at him, because they always expected him to do something unexpected. But no one had ever supposed that he would do anything so unexpected as to work steadily every day. It would not have been so surprising if he had worked twelve hours a day twice a week, but that he should work four hours every day, upset all preconceived ideas about him. He had done so for a full month, and really there seemed no reason now why he should stop. He got up before nine, and he worked from ten till one: at one he would be himself again till six, but he would work from six till seven. Stewart considered this exhibition as a striking imitation by Nature of Mr. R. L. Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde: he had not clearly realised before that the Babe had a dual nature. Just now he considered Hyde to be painfully predominant, for that the Babe should cease being absurd for four hours a day seemed to him a sacrifice of the best possibilities of his nature.
But the Babe, like Mr. Gladstone in one thing more, threw off all thoughts of such matters, except during work hours, and having determined to put in an extra hour in the afternoon, to make up for tennis in the morning, he trotted off through the dripping, drizzling rain to the tennis court in the best of spirits.
He went back to lunch with Reggie in King’s Hall and as, contrary to all precedent, the rain had stopped, they went for a walk afterwards round two or three football grounds, to see what was going on, and give Mr. Sykes an airing. Scratch games seemed the order of the day, and they “took situations” on outside wings opposite each other for a few minutes in the game on the King’s ground, until Reggie charged the Babe and knocked him down, after which they retired, dirty, but invigorated. Then they turned into the tennis court again for a while, and so by Burrell’s Walk across the town bridge, and back into Trinity Street, looked in at the shop windows, which are perhaps less alluring than any others in the kingdom, and admired the preparations for diverting the sewerage of the town from the Cam.
“But how,” said the Babe, “our college boats will be able to row in a perfectly empty river bed, is more than I feel fit to tell you.”
“They’ll keep up the water by shutting the locks,” said Reggie, vaguely.