. . . . . .
Buying those gowns afforded Sandie and Willie a good deal of fun. Well, they were light-hearted, and inclined to make merry over anything. But the gowns were so ridiculously long, they came down nearly to their heels. That would never do. So they commanded the shopkeeper to dock them by a foot at least; then they were paid for and taken away.
Classes were duly opened next day, and Sandie, somewhat shame-facedly it must be confessed, walked out into the street, bearing his blushing honours on his back. Somehow he had an idea that every one was looking at him. Well, at all events he was an object of very great interest to bevies of little guttersnipe urchins, who followed him shouting, “Buttery Willie Collie, red-backed and holy.”
I don’t know at all why they should shout such doggerel at the gown students, but they do. His back also became a target for innumerable snowballs, so that on the whole he was not sorry when safe in the quad at last.
The class-rooms were seated after the fashion of the gallery of a church or theatre, the seats rising tier after tier from the floor near the windows, where stood the professor’s table, towards the roof, so that to gain their places the students had first to climb a back stair, then descend the centre stair-like passage to their seats on either side. In Sandie’s days, whatever it may be now, practical joking was in its glory. Sometimes these jokes took what Sandie considered a mean and ungentlemanly turn, as when, to his astonishment, he saw a fusillade of snowballs coming over the gallery from the back-stairs and falling on the professor’s table.
All the more unworthy of any student was such conduct, inasmuch as it was the Professor of Greek who was thus assailed, and he was a very old and nervous man.
Another day a door-mat was thrown over the gallery class-room, alighting on the table and demolishing everything; and this by men who would have been mortally offended had you told them they were not gentlemen.
Sandie soon settled down to the routine of the class-rooms, and also to his own quiet studies at home. He soon found out the truth about the lecture system, however, namely, that it is a mistake, and that an earnest student can learn more at home from books in one hour than he could from twenty lectures.
. . . . . .
Although Sandie paid three shillings and sixpence of weekly rent for his room, he had it all to himself. He could therefore study when he pleased, without fear of interruption, and his landlady was really very good and kind to him. Willie was his constant visitor, but knowing Sandie’s studious habits, made it a point never to come and see him of an evening unless specially invited. And if, when Willie invited Sandie to his house to spend the evening, he replied that he could not well spare the time, nothing more was said on the subject.