"Yes. Go on," said all, much interested.
"There was a meeting of The Owls on," continued Dishy, "and they'd had the nerve to hold it on a staircase where there were actually two men of the crew—Duncombe and Eversley—trying to get to sleep."
"What did you do?" inquired Poltimore.
"Went in and reminded them. I thought they might have forgotten."
"What did they say?"
"They told me to go to—"
"Good Lord!" said the audience, genuinely horrified at the employment of such language by a non-athletic to an athletic man.
The Owls were a collection of rather dissipated young nobodies, while Dishy wore a Leander tie, which in a rowing college entitles a man to something like reverence.
"I soon found it was a put-up job," continued the coxswain. "They had some grudge against Duncombe, and wanted to score him off. I could hear him hammering on his bedroom floor above to make them dry up."
"What did you do then?"