“We all ought to have done a lot of things we haven’t done,” said Leamington.
“We had a butler once,” said the Babe, “who never would say the General Confession, because he said he hadn’t left undone the things he ought to have done, and it went against his conscience to say he had. He got the sack soon after for leaving the door of the cellar undone, and for getting drunk.”
“So he was undone himself.”
“When I grow up,” said the Babe with less bitterness, but returning like a burned moth to the sore subject—no charge for mixed metaphors—“I shall live exclusively in the society of archdeacons. Perhaps they might think me wicked. Yet I don’t know—my uncle whom you met last night thinks I’m such a good boy, and he’s a dean.”
“I doubt if they would. The other day some one sent a telegram to the Archdeacon of Basingstoke, a man of whom he knew nothing except that he was a teetotaller and an anti-vivisectionist, saying, ‘Fly at once, all is discovered.’ The Archdeacon flew, and has never been heard of since. No one has the slightest idea where he has gone or what he had done. You know you wouldn’t fly, Babe, if you were sent telegrams like that by the hundred.”
“How little you know me,” said the Babe dramatically. “I should fly like fun. Don’t you see if one flew, one’s character for wickedness would be established beyond all doubt. I might send a telegram to myself, telling me to fly. Then I should fly, but leave the telegram lying about in a conspicuous position. After a year’s absence I should return, but my character would be gone beyond all hopes of recovery, and the world would do me justice at last.”
“Poor misunderstood Babe! Why don’t you go to Oxford, saying you’ve been sent down from Cambridge? What time do we lunch?”
“Oh, about two, and it’s half-past twelve already. Let’s go round to the Pitt. This evening we will go to Trinity Chapel. A little walk is very wholesome after breakfast. Besides I shall go in a bowler, and perhaps we shall meet at Proggins. I shall insult him if we do.”
IV.—vs. Blackheath.
For he was very fast,
And he ran and he passed,
And the sun and the moon and the stars
Tried to catch him by the tail,
But they one and all did fail,
And Venus broke her nose ’gainst Mars.
Hotchpotch Verses.