'Gracious heavens!' Gillingham cried, looking over to Faussett, and hardly more than half whispering; 'why, don't you understand? the man's a dancing-master. He thinks we're his pupils, and he's going to make us dance the lancers!'
'By Jove, so he is!' Faussett exclaimed, delighted at this new development of the situation.
'Let's humour him. Fall into places, and let's have the lancers. Here, Tremenbeere, you be my partner.'
But before they could carry out this ingenious arrangement Mr. Plantagenet had suddenly discovered his mistake, and sat down, or, rather, sank with Gillingham's assistance into his easy-chair, where he sat now once more, blankly smiling a vacuous and impenetrable smile upon the uproarious company.
'Stick him out in the yard!' 'Pour cold water over him!' 'Give him a dose of cayenne!'
'Turn his coat inside out, and send him to find his way home with a label pinned upon him!' shouted a whole chorus of congenial and gentlemanly young fellows in varying voices, with varying suggestions for completing the degradation of the poor drunken old creature.
'No!' Gillingham thundered out in a voice of supreme command; 'do nothing of the sort. You wretched Philistines, you've had your fun out of him; and precious poor fun it is, too—all you, who are not students of human nature. You've got to leave him alone, now, I tell you, and give him time to recover.—Here, Faussett, lend me a hand with him; he's sound asleep. Let's put him over here to sleep it off upon the sofa.'
Faussett obeyed without a word, and they laid the old man out at full length on the couch to sleep off his first drowsiness.
'Now draw him a bottle of neat seltzer,' Gillingham went on with a commanding air; 'you've got to get him out of college somehow before twelve o'clock, you know; and it's better for yourselves to get him out sober. There'll be a precious hot row if he goes out so drunk that the porter has to help him, and worse still if the scouts come in and find him here in your rooms tomorrow morning.'
This common-sense argument, though coming from the Born Poet, seemed so far cogent to the half-tipsy lads that they forthwith exerted themselves to the utmost of their power in drawing the seltzer, and to holding it to Mr. Plantagenet's unwilling lips. After a time the old man half woke up again dreamily, and then Gillingham set to work to try a notable experiment.