OR,
COACHES AND COUSINSHIP.
Where the devil shall I go this Long? Paris is too hot; the inside of my adorable Château des Fleurs would give one a lively idea of the feelings of eels in a frying-pan. Rome's only fit to melt down puffy cardinals, as jocks set themselves before the kitchen fire preparatory to the Spring Meetings. In Switzerland there's nothing fit to eat. Spain might be the ticket—the Andalusians are a good-looking lot, but they haven't a notion of beer. Scotland I daren't enter, because I know I should get married under their rascally laws. I'd go to the Bads, but the V. P.'s fillies say they mean to do 'em this summer, and I won't risk meeting them if I know it; the baits they set to catch the unsuspecting are quite frightful. Where the devil shall I go?
So spoke Sydenham Morton, whilom Captain of Eton, now, in due course, having passed up to Kings, discussing ham-pie and audit, devils and coffee, while the June sun streamed through the large oriel windows.
"To the devil, I fear, if you only find your proper fraternity," said a man, coming in. Oak was never sported by Sydie, except when he was rattling certain little squares of ivory in boxes lined with green felt.
"Ah, Mr. Keane, is that you? Come in."
The permission was needless, insomuch as Keane was already in and down on a rocking-chair.
"One o'clock, and only just begun your breakfast! I have finished more than half my day's work."
"I dare say," answered Sydie; "but one shining light like you, monseigneur, is enough for a college. Why should I exert myself? I swore I hadn't four marks a year, and I've my fellowship for telling the furbelow. We all go in for the dolce here except you, and you're such a patent machine for turning out Q. E. D.s by the dozen, that you can no more help working than the bed-maker can help taking my tea and saying the cat did it, and 'May she never be forgiven if she ever so much as looked at that there blessed lock.' I say, find a Q. E. D. for me, to the most vexatious problem, where I'm to go this Long?"
"Go a quiet reading tour; mark out a regular plan, and travel somewhere rugged and lonely, with not a crinoline, or a trout-stream, or a pack of hounds within a hundred miles; the middle of Stonehenge, for example, or with the lighthouse men out at the Smalls or Eddystone. You'd do wonders when you came back, Sydie."