"Rot, isn't it," he said.
"Beastly. Wouldn't have thought old Day had it in him. But I'll tell you what," he said. "Do the impot now, and then you'll be able to start at three sharp, and we shall get in a good time on the river. Day always sets the same thing. I've known scores of chaps get impots from him, and they all had to do the Greek numerals. He's mad on the Greek numerals. Never does anything else. You'll be as safe as anything if you do them. Buck up, I'll help."
They accordingly sat down there and then. By three o'clock an imposing array of sheets of foolscap covered with badly-written Greek lay on the study table.
"That ought to be enough," said Linton, laying down his pen. "He can't set you more than we've done, I should think."
"Rummy how alike our writing looks," said Dunstable, collecting the sheets and examining them. "You can hardly tell which is which even when you know. Well, there goes three. My watch is slow, as it always is. I'll go and get that note."
Two minutes later he returned, full of abusive references to Mr. Day. The crafty pedagogue appeared to have foreseen Dunstable's attempt to circumvent him by doing the Greek numerals on the chance of his setting them. The imposition he had set in his note was ten pages of irregular verbs, and they were to be shown up in his study before five o'clock. Linton's programme for the afternoon was out of the question now. But he loyally gave up any other plans which he might have formed in order to help Dunstable with his irregular verbs. Dunstable was too disgusted with fate to be properly grateful.
"And the worst of it is," he said, as they adjourned for tea at half-past four, having deposited the verbs on Mr. Day's table, "that all those numerals will be wasted now."
"I should keep them, though," said Linton. "They may come in useful. You never know."
Towards the end of the second week of term Fate, by way of compensation, allowed Dunstable a distinct stroke of luck. Mr. Forman, the master of his new form, set him a hundred lines of Virgil, and told him to show them up next day. To Dunstable's delight, the next day passed without mention of them; and when the day after that went by, and still nothing was said, he came to the conclusion that Mr. Forman had forgotten all about them.