"Captain, art tha' sleeping down below?"
Cripps sat up very straight and looked about him.
"Why are you not in College?" the voice asked again.
Cripps looked up in the direction of the voice and leapt to his feet. Sherlock Holmes fell neglected on the grass.
Lallie was leaning out of the window just above him.
"I beg your pardon," he exclaimed politely; "I didn't know you were there."
"Naturally, for you were asleep. Now how comes it that you were falling asleep in the middle of the morning? That's what I want to know. Are you stopping with T--with Mr. Bevan too?"
Cripps longed to pose as a visitor, but honesty, like many worse things, is sometimes hereditary, so he hung his head and mumbled dismally:
"No, I'm one of the chaps; but I'm in quarantine--for mumps of all beastly silly diseases. I know I shan't have it, too."
"Poor boy," said Lallie sympathetically, "I hope you won't. I've had it, and it's horrible. Paddy brought it back from here once and gave it to me. It seems to me that the boys in this house are always having something."